Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

PETITION (COTTON TEXTILE INDUSTRY)

Mr. Thornton: With your permission, Mr. Speaker, and that of the House, I wish to present a Petition signed by the Mayor of Farnworth and 2,525 other residents of that Borough. Amongst other things, the Petition calls attention to the fact that large numbers of the townspeople depend for their livelihood on the cotton textile industry, and that widespread unemployment and under-employment are again returning, due to the loss of export markets and continuing imports of cotton textiles from Commonwealth countries with lower living standards.
After setting forth the very relevant and important factors, the Petition concludes:
Wherefore, your Petitioners humbly pray that your Honourable House will take action without delay to limit the import of cheap textiles produced under unfair competitive conditions, and will devote itself to save the cotton towns of Lancashire from becoming derelict by taking prompt action to stimulate and revive the cotton industry and to secure the establishment of new industries in the Borough of Farnworth and other cotton towns in Lancashire.
And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.

To lie upon the Table.

Oral Answers to Questions — QUESTIONS TO MINISTERS

Mr. Bottomley: On a point of order. May I seek your guidance, Mr. Speaker, about the unauthorised transfer of a Question which was put down to the Chancellor of the Exchequer but which has been passed on to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty? For eight years, I have tried to get some satisfaction from the Admiralty about the closing of

the Royal Marine Barracks at Chatham. There has been a tremendous waste of public money, and I thought that this concerned the Treasury more than the Admiralty. May I ask, therefore, that the Question be re-transferred to the Chancellor of the Exchequer?

Mr. Speaker: I have frequently said in this House that the transfer of Questions has nothing to do with me at all but is entirely done by Ministers, who know their own responsibilities best. I am afraid that I cannot assist the right hon. Gentleman at all in this matter.

Oral Answers to Questions — NATIONAL FINANCE

Virement

Mr. Ellis Smith: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer (1) what action has been taken to prevent the misuse of virement in the future; what action was taken after the figures given in the Air Services Appropriation Account as £2,684,000, was subsequently found inaccurate, the true figure being under £1,000,000; and what is the explanation of the misuse of virement and inaccuracies pointed out in paragraphs 4, 6, 9, 10, and 11 of the Second Report of the Committee of Public Accounts, 1957–58;
(2) if he will make a full statement in answer to paragraphs 80, 93 and 94, of the Third Report by the Committee of Public Accounts of Session 1957–58; and what action is to be taken to prevent the occurrence of any further grounds for similar criticism, and to guarantee that no expenditure is made which has not been authorised by Parliament.

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. J. E. S. Simon): A Treasury Minute on the Reports of the Public Accounts Committee, Session 1957–58, has been furnished to the Committee. I expect that the Committee, in accordance with usual practice, will shortly present the Minute to the House as an Appendix to one of its own Reports.

Mr. Ellis Smith: Is the Minister aware that, in the view of some of us who have studied these matters, the Treasury is not working in harmony with the Parliamentary control of expenditure? Will the Minister consult his right hon. Friend with a view to consulting the authorities of this House to see whether the Treasury are responsible for repudiating what are


really the Standing Orders of this House? I wish to quote from the Second Report, which is mentioned in my Question, which says—
transfers between Votes ought. in the interests of Parliamentary control, to be authorised, not by virement but by Supplementary Estimates"—
and to link that with—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I think that is enough.

Mr. Ellis Smith: I was just going to quote from—

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member cannot make a speech on this topic at Question Time. He will have to think of other hon. Members who have Questions later on the Order Paper.

Mr. Ellis Smith: I am not making a speech. I am asking a supplementary question—only one—on two Questions. I was directing the attention of the Minister to the Treasury repudiation of the Standing Orders of this House, as set out in the Report to which I want to draw attention.

Mr, Simon: We debated some of these matters on the Monk Resolutions last summer. I think it would be better if the hon. Gentleman would wait and see the Treasury Minute which has been sent to the Public Accounts Committee.

Mr. H. Wilson: Is not the hon. and learned Gentleman aware that there is great concern about this virement business, which really is a relic of a bygone day and gives the Service Departments a degree of freedom in spending—some may say wasting—money which is not given to the Civil Departments? In view of the quite monstrous Supplementary Estimates just presented to us, many of which could have been avoided by proper Government control, is the hon. and learned Gentleman aware that there is a wide feeling on both sides of the House—he has only to ask his hon. Friend the Member for Farnham (Sir G. Nicholson) to confirm it—that it is time the whole subject was properly re-examined in the House as a whole in relation to the Reports of the Select Committee, not only on the narrower questions of virement, but of control of public expenditure generally?

Mr. Simon: The Treasury use of virement is done under an express statutory

provision of this House in the Appropriation Act. I know that opinions differ on both sides of the House whether virement should still be used, should be relaxed, or used more strictly. There is quite a big division of opinion. We debated it last summer, and I think the House would wish to see the Treasury Minute before forming any further opinion.

Greyhound Racing

Miss Burton: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer (1) whether he is aware that the yield from the 10 per cent. totalisator tax from the Coventry Greyhound Stadium for the years 1956, 1957, and 1958 was £40,996, £37,904, and £34,781, respectively; and to what extent this decline is symptomatic of the general financial position of greyhound racing taxation;
(2) whether he is aware that, at the Coventry Greyhound Stadium, punters forfeit approximately 3s. 4d. in the £ on any winnings due to the effect of the 10 per cent. totalisator tax and the 6 per cent. deducted to cover operating costs, and that bets placed on the totalisator have decreased with the consequent result that the amount of the 6 per cent. has also become less; and to what extent this situation is general.

The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. F. J. Erroll): I am aware of the position at the Coventry Greyhound Stadium, but it is not typical: over the country as a whole, totalisator turnover and the yield of the 10 per cent. duty have not varied to any significant extent in the last three years.

Miss Burton: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that there seems to be no reason why the position should be worse in Coventry than elsewhere? Do I understand from his Answer that the financial position of greyhound racing throughout the country is not deteriorating? As I have two Questions on the Order Paper, Mr. Speaker, might I further ask whether the hon. Gentleman is aware of the widespread dissatisfaction caused by the fact that people who bet on the tote at greyhound stadiums are taxed whereas those who do so on the racecourse are not taxed?

Mr. Erroll: The hon. Lady would not expect me to speculate as to the reasons for the decline in Coventry. As to the


difference in the incidence of taxation on greyhound and horse racing, the hon. Lady will not expect me to anticipate my right hon. Friend's Budget statement.

National Coal Board (Taxation)

Mr. Osborne: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in view of the fact that although the National Coal Board made no provisions for taxation for the years 1947, 1948, 1952 and 1957, over £19,500,000 have been reserved for taxation in other years; and why the Board's taxation liabilities have not yet been finally determined by the Inland Revenue for any year since the vesting date.

Mr. Simon: I cannot disclose information about the tax affairs of a particular concern.

Mr. Osborne: If private industry copied nationalised industries and paid nothing towards the maintenance of the Welfare State, how much would have to be added, say, to taxation on beer and tobacco and to Purchase Tax?

Mr. Nabarro: Do not add anything to Purchase Tax.

Mr. Simon: If I accepted the premise of that question, I should be disclosing information about the tax affairs of a particular concern.

Mr. H. Wilson: Can the hon. and learned Gentleman say how much of the expenditure on the Welfare State, not least on industrial injuries, is due to the fact that industries which had to be nationalised have left a scar of very heavy expenditure for many years to come?

Mr. Simon: I would ask the right hon. Member to put that question down.

Post-war Credits

Mr. Gower: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many representations he has received from persons and organisations for the earlier repayment of postwar credits; and how many for the repayment of post-war credits in cases of particular hardship.

Mr. Simon: About 1,000 during the past year. A separate count has not been kept of those asking for repayment in cases of particular hardship.

Mr. Gower: While appreciating that he cannot anticipate the Budget, will my

hon. and learned Friend take account of the fact that there is obviously widespread feeling that the present powers under which post-war credits are paid are somewhat too rigid?

Mr. Simon: I shall draw the observations of my hon. Friend to the attention of my right hon. Friend.

Mr. E. Fletcher: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he is aware that the many cases of hardship arising from the postponement of postwar credits are now aggravated by rising unemployment; and whether, in view of this and of the present state of the national finances, he will now accelerate his review of the problem and devise a new formula for quicker repayment of post-war credits, including immediate repayment in all cases of hardship.

Mr. Simon: My right hon. Friend has noted the hon. Member's suggestion.

Mr. Fletcher: Is the Minister aware of the great resentment on this subject and, in view of the current relaxation on capital expenditure, does not the Minister think it is quite immoral to continue to withhold sums due to people who are in great distress and hardship, particularly as a result of the recent unemployment for which the Government are responsible?

Mr. Simon: I certainly cannot accept the terms in which the hon. Gentleman has put his supplementary question. I know that those who have post-war credits outstanding naturally desire to have them repaid, but I would point out that the hon. Gentleman's party failed to find any way of repaying them on the basis suggested.

Mr. Ridsdale: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what would be the cost of repaying post-war credits to those whose incomes are under £500, £750 and £1,000 a year, respectively.

Mr. Simon: I regret that I cannot give an estimate, because the necessary information is not available.

Mr. Ridsdale: Whilst many people are hoping for a considerable reduction in Income Tax as a first priority in the coming Budget, will my hon. and learned Friend bear in mind that those who have been hardest hit by inflation do not pay


a lot of tax? Would he not agree that this method is a good way of helping this section of the community?

Mr. Simon: All I can safely say is that will draw my hon. Friend's observations to the attention of my right hon. Friend.

purchase Tax

Mr. Hale: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether, in view of the state of the cotton textile industry, he is prepared to remove the Purchase Tax of 5 per cent. on clothing made with cotton textiles.

Mr. Erroll: My right hon. Friend cannot anticipate his Budget decisions.

Mr. Hale: In view of the fact that it has been said from both sides of the House that it is beneficial to deal with Purchase Tax outside the Budget discussions, and in view of the deplorable state of the cotton industry and the fact that even the slight reductions which have already resulted from the withdrawal of the Yarn Agreement are said to have stimulated purchasing power, is not this at least one small step which even this Government could take straight away?

Mr. Erroll: There are other Questions on the Order Paper about Purchase Tax changes in advance of the Budget. As to opinion in the House, I would remind the hon. Member that during debates on the Finance Bill only last year there was general agreement that Purchase Tax is not an operative factor on short-time working.

Mr. H. Wilson: While we all recognise that the Chancellor, if not the President of the Board of Trade, cannot anticipate the Budget statement, would the Economic Secretary at any rate warn his right hon. Friend to avoid the gross blunders made by the then Chancellor—now the Lord Privy Seal—in 1955, when 'le refused to lift Purchase Tax on textiles, said in this House in the Financial Bill debates that it would be dishonest to do so, and then—realising that an Election was coming on—removed the tax? If the Chancellor is to do it, will he do it quickly?

Mr. Erroll: My right hon. Friend is always grateful for the voluminous advice tendered by the right hon. Member.

Mr. Nabarro: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer, having regard to Purchase Tax revenue in 1957–58 at £494 million and his Budget estimate for the current year of Purchase Tax revenue at £491 million notwithstanding reductions in rates, what revised estimate for Purchase Tax revenue for 1958–59 he has now made consequent upon stimulated demand following the ending of hire-purchase restrictions and the credit squeeze.

Mr. Erroll: As my right hon. Friend said on 25th November last, it is not the practice to publish any revision of the Budget estimates during the course of the financial year.

Mr. Nabarro: Has not my hon. Friend perceived that yesterday the Chancellor substantially abolished the Capital Issues Committee, as I have been pressing upon him in my advice during the last two years? Would he not now take even more apposite advice and abolish the present discriminatory system of Purchase Tax, put in its place a single fiat-rate of tax, non-discriminatory in incidence, and thereby directly help our export trade?

Mr. Erroll: My right hon. Friend always pays great attention to advice received from hon. Members of this House.

Mr. H. Wilson: Would he not pay greater attention to advice, apposite or otherwise, from his hon. Friend the Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) if once in a while the hon. Member went into the Division Lobby with us in support of what he is advocating?

Mr. Nabarro: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he is aware that pre-war Great Britain dominated export markets for ladies' compacts, lipstick holders, powder bowls and similar accessories to cosmetics, whereas today export trade is dominated by Western Germany, and Great Britain's share has fallen to small proportions; what steps he has taken to investigate the bearing which the present 60 per cent. rate of Purchase Tax for such accessories on the home market has on the export trade; and what would be the cost to the Exchequer of reclassifying in Group 23 all receptacles for personal or domestic purposes instead of Group 31 as at present.

Mr. Erroll: I would remind my hon. Friend that my right hon. Friend has to consider not only export aspects but also the yield and the internal logic of the Purchase Tax structure. The information asked for in the last part of the Question is not available.

Mr. Nabarro: My hon. Friend has just said that the need for exports is paramount. Those are the words which he used. Is it not a fact that on cosmetics and the receptacles referred to in the Question a sum of only £6½ million is collected in Purchase Tax and that three or four times that sum of revenue from exports may be lost as a result of the penal Purchase Tax? Why will not my hon. Friend restore some equity to this position?

Mr. Erroll: Articles exported through normal commercial channels are not normally subject to Purchase Tax.

Mr. Dance: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he is aware that the fishing tackle industry, which is largely a craft industry, is suffering a serious decline on account of the high rate of Purchase Tax levied on its products; and, in view of this, whether he will give sympathetic consideration to the reduction of Purchase Tax so levied.

Mr. Erroll: Commercial fishing gear is not taxed, but sports fishing tackle, like other sports requisites is taxable at the standard rate of 30 per cent. My right hon. Friend will bear my hon. Friend's point in mind, but I must not anticipate his Budget decisions.

Mr. Dance: While thanking my hon. Friend for that answer, may I ask him to convey to his right hon. Friend the grave anxiety which exists at present in Redditch, a town which has been famous for manufacturing fishing tackle for some time, as to the future of this craft trade?

Mr. Erroll: My right hon. Friend has received no representations from the trade that the industry is suffering a serious decline as a result of the tax, but he will take into account what my hon. Friend has just said.

Mr. Nabarro: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he is aware that a horn regarded as a wind musical instrument is subject to Purchase Tax at 30 per cent.

whereas a musical motor car horn of electrical type, or with hand rubber bulb for squeezing wind into the horn, does not attract Purchase Tax even if used occasionally for theatrical performances; what rate of tax is applicable to a hunting horn and to a child's toy trumpet; what particular considerations guide his decisions as to the rate of Purchase Tax applicable to particular horns; and to what extent he is influenced in his decision by the volume or by the melodious quality of noise produced.

Mr. Chetwynd: On a point of order. Should not the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) declare an interest in this Question since he is always blowing his own trumpet?

Mr. Nabarro: Is an opprobrious comment of that kind from the other side of the House in order, in view of the legitimacy of the Question and the reference to musical instruments, notably French horns?

Mr. Speaker: The two horns mentioned in the Question are a hunting horn and a child's toy trumpet. I do not know that either of those applies to the hon. Member for Kidderminster.

Mr. Erroll: Perhaps I may now be allowed to reply to the Question. The answer is: Yes, Sir; 30 per cent.; the tax Schedule and common sense; while the answer to the last part is, not at all, but personally I rate quality above volume, even in Parliamentary Questions.

Mr. Nabarro: Is it not a fact that a motor horn makes a harsh, raucous and unmelodious noise? Having regard to the fact that a 30 per cent. Purchase Tax is placed on musical instruments, including a French horn, which produces melodious music and contributes to the arts and culture, why should my right hon. Friend the Chancellor be depressing the arts by this vicious impost and encouraging raucous noises by removing the instruments which produce them from the Purchase Tax Schedule? Is there any equity in that position?

Sir G. Nicholson: Is it not a fact that the Treasury is on the horns of a dilemma?

Mr. Nabarro: On a point of order. I have not had an answer to my supplementary question.

Mr. Speaker: I cannot help that.

Mrs. White: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what representations he has received on the desirability of making an announcement on Purchase Tax prior to his Budget statement.

Mr. J. Hynd: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he is aware that retailers of household utensils, and similar goods, are now engaged in reducing stocks to a minimum through uncertainty as to the Government's intentions concerning Purchase Tax on such articles; and whether he is now in a position to make a statement to clarify the position.

Mr. Oram: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what steps he proposes to take to avoid the uncertainty in trade and industry arising from speculation about Purchase Tax changes.

Mr. Erroll: I would refer the hon. Members to the reply which I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Mr. M. Lindsay) and other hon. Members on Thursday, 29th January.

Mrs. White: That reply refers to another reply given to the hon. Member for Twickenham (Mr. Gresham Cooke) on 26th January, and that reply was ambiguous; it did not make clear whether the Chancellor was saying that there would be no statement before the Budget or that he might or might not make a statement before the Budget. Is not the hon. Member aware that it would save himself, the House and the Official Reporters a great deal of work if we could eliminate from the Order Paper all Questions on this matter by the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro)?

Mr. Erroll: The answer was perfectly clear. My right hon. Friend said that he had no statement to make and added that he must be free to consider the possibility of such changes in the context of his Budget.

Mr. J. Hynd: Is there not precedent for the Chancellor relieving the uncertainty in business on these matters before the Budget? In view of the fact that traders have come to expect some clarification of the position before the Budget, is there any special reason why the Chancellor cannot give some indication, at least in particular instances? I make special reference to the point made in my Question about household utensils, in view of the great difficulties arising in many of the small shops.

Mr. Erroll: There are also very good precedents for not making a statement about Purchase Tax in advance of the Budget, and my right hon. Friend has had regard to those precedents.

Mr. Oram: Is the Minister not aware that when the Home Secretary was Chancellor of the Exchequer he made a statement on his Purchase Tax intentions in February and then said that he considered it a more honest and honourable way of informing the country? Would he not urge the present Chancellor to follow that precedent of honesty and honour?

Mr. Erroll: The hon. Member's Question referred to speculation. It is therefore appropriate to point out that while the intentions were honest and honourable, as he said, the statement then made did not, in fact, remove speculation.

Mr. Chapman: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he is now in a position to make a statement about the nature of the discussions which he has had recently with the motor industry about Purchase Tax on motor cars and particularly on commercial vehicles chassis.

Mr. Erroll: No, Sir. My right hon. Friend cannot comment on any representations which he may receive at this time of year.

Mr. Chapman: I am referring particularly to chassis. Does the hon. Gentleman realise that it was a pledge given by the Chancellor last year to meet the industry this winter, which probably avoided an all-party revolt on the issue during the passage of the Finance Bill? Would he be good enough to pass on to his right hon. Friend the suggestion that it would not be easy to get out of a revolt this year if he has nothing to offer in the Budget?

Mr. Erroll: That is quite another matter. The fact is that I am sure the hon. Gentleman would not wish my right hon. Friend to break the confidentiality of this particular meeting.

Sir A. Hurd: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer to what extent he has approved arrangements between manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers to forestall changes in Purchase Tax rates which may be made in this year's Budget; and if he will readily allow the


extension of such loss-sharing arrangements, designed to maintain the flow of goods from factories to shops during this period of uncertainty.

Mr. Erroll: I take it my hon. Friend has in mind "sale or return" and similar arrangements. These do not require my right hon. Friend's approval. The question whether a particular arrangement succeeds in the object of deferring the tax charge is one of law.

Sir A. Hurd: I had not in mind that arrangement. Will my hon. Friend inquire of the President of the Board of Trade about this current loss-sharing arrangement by which manufacturers are to bear part of the loss which would otherwise fall on retailers on stocks which may be subject to Purchase Tax reduction?

Mr. Erroll: Yes, Sir, I will certainly make inquiries, but I should like to remind my hon. Friend that the deferment of the tax charge, if it is to succeed, is a matter for the law.

Wages and Salaries

Mr. Osborne: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what was the cost of the national wages and salaries, respectively, for 1951; and what are the estimated corresponding figures for 1958.

Mr. Erroll: In 1951, £5,095 million was paid out in wages and £2,580 million in salaries. For the year 1957, £7,720 million was paid out in wages and £4,060 million in salaries. Corresponding figures are not yet available for the year 1958, but in the first nine months of 1958 the combined wage and salary bill amounted to £9,095 million, representing an increase of 4 per cent. on the corresponding period of 1957.

Mr. Osborne: May I ask two questions? When does my hon. Friend expect the final figure to be ready? Would he not agree that the figures he has already show that the working man of this country is far better off under the Tories than he was under the Socialists?

Mr. Erroll: I regret that I cannot say at present when the full figures for 1958 will be available.

Exports and Imports

Mr. Osborne: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what proportion, approximately, of Great Britain's industrial production must be exported to pay for the 40 per cent. of our food requirements and the 100 per cent. raw materials that must be imported; and what additional steps he proposes to take to make the nation realise the importance of exports and the difficulties of maintaining them.

Mr. Erroll: In order to pay for our imports and meet other commitments we need to export roughly 30 per cent. of the output of manufacturing industry. The export trade remains of paramount importance, and I think this is generally realised. My right hon. Friend has no additional steps in mind, but he is always ready to receive suggestions.

Mr. Osborne: In view of this immensely impressive figure of 30 per cent. of our products which have to be exported to keep us afloat, does not my hon. Friend think it is a mean fraud for the Opposition to tell the people of this country that they can guarantee full employment when they cannot make the foreigner buy British?

Mr. Woodburn: Would the hon. Gentleman ask his right hon. Friend to keep in mind that it may be more profitable for this country in the long run to invest a great deal more in this country and a little less abroad?

Mr. Erroll: I think it most important that we should invest abroad as well as at home.

Irish Sailors' and Soldiers' Land Trust (Houses)

Mr. Hale: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many of the houses in Northern Ireland, vested in the Irish Sailors' and Soldiers' Land Trust, have been sold to ex-Service men tenants and to the widows of ex-Service men to the most recent convenient date for computation; and at what average price.

Mr. Erroll: The sale of houses by the Irish Sailors' and Soldiers' Land Trust is not a matter for which the Chancellor of the Exchequer is responsible and I would suggest that the hon. Member should make inquiry of the Trust.

Mr. Hale: Is the Minister aware that when tenants made inquiries of the council they had to wait for four-and-a half months for a reply, that similar houses in the Irish Free State are subject to a court of appeal ruling, being let rent-free to tenants, and that there is great distress and anxiety amongst these tenants? As the Treasury houses the Irish Land Trust, is there not such a responsibility that the Chancellor might well receive a deputation on this matter?

Mr. Erroll: No. I have already stated that the Chancellor has no responsibility. I suggest that the hon. Member's question should be directed to the Trust.

Government Stocks

Mr. H. A. Price: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in view of the magnitude of the cash loss suffered by those who accepted the invitation of the Governments of the day to invest in 1932 3½ per cent. War Loan and in 1946 2½ per cent. Treasury Stock, and since the reputation of Government stocks is at stake, if he will give urgent consideration to the possibility of an early announcement assigning redemption or conversion dates.

Mr. Erroll: No, Sir. I cannot accept the suggestion that the reputation of Government stocks is at stake. The price of these stocks is, of course, bound to fluctuate with the changes in the long-term rate of interest, but the income remains unchanged. Quite apart from the propriety of varying the terms in favour of the investor and at the taxpayer's expense, it would be impossible to find a way of doing so that would be workable and fair to all concerned.

Mr. Price: Does my hon. Friend appreciate that we are not asking him to vary the terms? We are merely asking that the Government should accept the obligations which they accepted at the time, when they said that the repayment date would be 1952 or later. How much later?

Mr. Erroll: That is the question.

Mr. Price: May I have an answer to that question?
On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. In view of the unsatisfactory nature of the answer, I give notice that I shall seek to raise the matter again.

Mr. Nabarro: The Minister is getting into trouble today.

Mr. Erroll: There is nothing unusual in that.

Suez Operations (Cost)

Mr. H. Hynd: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is now the total cost of the Suez operations, taking into account military expenditure, loss of the British base, our share of clearing the canal, the higher cost of petrol, repayment of loans from the International Money Fund and the Export-Import Bank of America, and the new agreement with the United Arab Republic.

Mr. Erroll: I would refer the hon. Member to the reply which my right hon. Friend gave on 3rd February to the hon. Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Lewis).

Mr. Hynd: As the complete figures have not yet been disclosed, will the Minister ensure that before the nation declares judgment at a General Election the full facts are laid before them?

Mr. Erroll: The fullest possible facts have already been made public.

Mr. H. Wilson: If the hon. Member is incapable of adding up the figures, will he take it that people who can add up, having allowed for whatever is the cost of reparations under the United Arab Republic financial agreement, and having allowed for the heavy borrowing to maintain sterling in December, 1956, put the figure at no less than £500 million? In view of statements by hon. Members opposite about the groundnuts scheme, will he see that the country can compare the two figures and put them into perspective?

Mr. Erroll: I will take note of the points the right hon. Gentleman has raised.

Mr. Dudley Williams: When drawing up these figures of the cost of the Suez operation, will my hon. Friend give an indication to the country of how much of this cost was directly attributable to the scandalous behaviour of the Opposition?

Companies (Foreign Control)

Mr. Cronin: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if, as it is possible for foreign companies to take over a controlling interest or obtain undue influence


in British companies by ordinary Stock Exchange transactions, he will take steps to modify the results of such activities on occasions when they are not in Great Britain's economic interests.

Mr. Erroll: No, Sir. I would refer the hon. Member to my reply on 29th January to the right hon. Member for Battersea, North (Mr. Jay).

Mr. Cronin: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the Government may be under some electoral temptation on these matters in the future? Does he appreciate that the improvement in the last monthly figures of the gold and dollar reserve was largely due to dollars crossing the Atlantic for the British Aluminium take-over?

Mr. Erroll: The improvement was due to a number of factors, not least of which was the decision to merge the sterling rates.

Mr. H. Wilson: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the biggest single improvement in any month in the gold and dollar figures since the last election was the sale by the present Prime Minister of the Trinidad Oil Company, and in view of that precedent, which has obviously not been repudiated by the Government, will he make it quite plain that the Treasury will act to prevent dollars crossing the Atlantic for the purpose of purchasing major British companies in this country?

Mr. Erroll: Most certainly not.

European Free Trade Area and Common Market

Mr. Grimond: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will make a statement on the present position regarding the Free Trade Area, the Common Market, and Great Britain's position in regard to them.

Mr. Cronin: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is the present policy of Her Majesty's Government with regard to future trade relations with the European Economic Community.

The Paymaster-General (Mr. Reginald Maudling): Our object is first to find a settlement, acceptable to the 0.E.E.C., of the immediate problems caused by the entry into operation of the Treaty of Rome. But Her Majesty's Government continue to attach great importance to settlement of the long-term problem and

will remain in close touch with other European Governments to this end.

Mr. Grimond: Can the right hon. Gentleman say if the present position is that negotiations are at the moment broken off altogether, or whether Her Majesty's Government are actually formulating proposals, or whether they are awaiting proposals to be formulated by the Common Market countries for the association of this country with the Common Market later in the year?

Mr. Maudling: Negotiations were certainly not broken off; they were suspended. It is difficult to deal with this generally in question and answer. I understand that the House may have an opportunity in the near future of discussing these matters more fully.

Mr. Cronin: While appreciating the difficulties of the Government in answering this, has the right hon. Gentleman taken note of reports of the more favourable attitude on the part of the Common Market countries for closer association with Great Britain, and does not he think it now time for more intensive negotiations rather than this posture of calm irresolution which the Government have adopted?

Mr. Maudling: I do not know what the hon. Gentleman means by "calm irresolution". The Government attach the greatest importance to a solution of this problem. Everyone has always been in favour of closer association, but the difficulty has been to find the terms to achieve it.

Mr. Woodburn: Would the right hon. Gentleman try to keep the situation fluid so far as the amalgamation of civil lines is concerned, because if the civil air lines of the Common Market countries are amalgamated to form one unit it will be rather difficult to break into it later on?

Mr. Maudling: That is not really a question for me.

Mechanical Lighters

Mrs. Mann: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if, in view of the number of home accidents caused by children playing with matches, he will abolish or reduce the Customs duty on all mechanical lighters.

Mr. Erroll: The hon. Lady would not expect me to anticipate my right hon. Friend's Budget statement.

Income Tax

Mrs. Mann: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he is aware that on the death of her husband a mother, with or without a family, loses the £250 Income Tax allowance, and is treated as a single person for Income Tax purposes; and if he will abolish this practice.

Mr. Simon: I am afraid that my right hon. Friend does not see his way to propose the adoption of the hon. Lady's suggestion.

Mrs. Mann: Would the Financial Secretary intimate to his right hon. Friend, who may not know, that the widow is having a very hard struggle when she is left with a mortgage on her house, and that even if she goes to work she is penalised by having her entire 50s. widow's pension taken away from her by his other right hon. Friend? Would not his two right hon. Friends get together to try to do something for the widows of this country?

Mr. Simon: I know that there are many widows suffering considerable hardship, and in any case their lot is one which must command sympathy. This is, however, a question of fiscal law, and successive Governments have not been able to accept the suggestion of the hon. Lady, for the simple reason that the married person's allowance is higher than the single person's allowance because it is an allowance on two peoples' incomes. With regard to the second part of the hon. Lady's supplementary question, she will, of course, be aware that the earnings rule has been relaxed in favour of widows who go out to work.

Mr. H. Wilson: May I ask why it was that on Question No. 24 the Economic Secretary could not anticipate the Budget statement yet on Question No. 25, equally a Budget matter and requiring legislation, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury turned it down flat, without even saying that the Chancellor would give consideration to it between now and the Budget?

Mr. Simon: I should have made it plain that I was speaking with my right hon. Friend's authority.

Sir T. Moore: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. There are 124 Questions on the Order Paper today. We have reached No. 25. Yesterday you were in the same predicament and referred to the fact that there were so many supplementary questions asked that it was difficult to get on. Today the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Huyton (Mr. H. Wilson) has asked a supplementary question on practically every Question raised. May I ask whether there is any way by which we can hope to reach the end of Questions today?

Mr. Speaker: That is beyond my power.

Mr. Oliver: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he is aware of the hardship caused to widows, spinsters and married women living apart from their husbands between the ages of 60 to 65 years, who pay Income Tax on their small incomes on amounts not exceeding £275 a year; and whether he will consider giving tax exemption at 60 years of age as will be the case on their attaining the age of 65 years.

Mr. Simon: I have noted the hon. Member's suggestion.

Mr. Oliver: I am very much obliged to the Financial Secretary, but will he bear in mind that this point was contained in an Amendment to the Finance Bill, but was not called? Will he also bear in mind that there is very great hardship when spinsters and others, drawing only £2 10s. a week pension, and having a small sum from their employer—an income of £3 2s. 6d. in all—are expected to pay tax on £40 of their income?

Mr. Simon: The hon. and learned Gentleman knows that the difficulty here is that a husband can qualify for age exemption or age relief by virtue of his wife's age as well as of his own; and the Royal Commission on the Taxation of Profits and Income endorsed the present arrangement.

Electricity Industry and Roads

Mr. Gresham Cooke: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is the total public capital investment in the electricity industry and on roads, respectively, since 1945, to the latest convenient date.

Mr. Erroll: From 1948 to 1957 inclusive, public investment in the electricity industry and on roads totalled £1,819 million and £182 million, respectively. I regret that comparable figures are not available for the years 1945–47.

Mr. Gresham Cooke: In view of the tremendous slice of the national public expenditure taken by the nationalised electricity industry—some ten times that spent on roads—would my hon. Friend see that a fair balance is kept between these two important public investments?

Mr. Erroll: The investment on new roads has been restricted in the past in favour of other more urgent investment. I am sure my hon. Friend knows full well the high level of investment taking place now and for future years in our roads programme.

Distribution of Industry Act (Applications)

Mr. Fernyhough: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is the total financial assistance given to the 16 projects which he has approved under the Distribution of Industry Act, 1958.

Mr. Erroll: Financial assistance to a total of £378,250 has been offered for the sixteen projects.

Mr. Fernyhough: Since Her Majesty's Government attached so much importance to the 1958 Act in regard to the effect that it would have on absorbing the unemployed, does the hon. Gentleman think that a miserly expenditure of that kind is going to make any impact whatsoever on the growing unemployment problem, and does not he think that he ought to begin to tackle the job so that those now walking the streets seeking jobs may be given a little help?

Mr. Erroll: A total of over a third of a million pounds on this one form of assistance in a few months is quite a substantial achievement.

Mr. Oliver: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer to what extent applications have been made by employers for assistance under the Distribution of Industries (Industrial Finance) Act, 1958, since the passing of the Act.

Mr. Erroll: A total of 74 firm and eligible applications have been made, of which 16 have so far been approved.

Mr. Oliver: That reply means that a very small number of the total number of applications has been approved. Does not that suggest that it will take a long time before the effect of this Act will have any impression at all on the districts for which it is intended?

Mr. Erroll: No, we are doing rather well. Of 74 applications, 33 are still under examination and only 25 have been rejected.

Development Areas Advisory Committee (Greenock Applications)

Dr. Dickson Mabon: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many applications were lodged in 1958 with the Development Areas Treasury Advisory Committee by firms operating in Greenock; how many have been approved; and what amount of public money has been involved.

Mr. Erroll: Three firm and eligible applications were lodged with the Committee in 1958. Of these, one involving £75,000 has been approved.

Dr. Dickson Mabon: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer when the Development Areas Treasury Advisory Committee received the application from the Inchgreen Investigating Company, Limited, for financial assistance in the construction of the proposed Clyde graving dock at Greenock; and if he will give a favourable decision at an early date.

Mr. Erroll: A formal application for financial assistance for the construction of this dry dock was received by the Committee on 29th December, 1958. The need for an early decision is fully appreciated, but I cannot forecast what that decision may be.

Dr. Mabon: Is the Economic Secretary aware that this much-needed project for the Clydeside has been hanging fire for 12 years and that it is perfectly clear that without State assistance it will never be realised? Is he further aware that since the Chancellor of the Exchequer made his statement almost a year ago unemployment on the Clydeside has risen appreciably, and that this is just the kind of thing to help the unemployment position there?

Mr. Erroll: We are fully aware of the urgency of the matter, but we only received the formal application less than 12 weeks ago, and this is a big and complicated scheme which must be carefully studied and considered before a decision is reached.

British Market Research Bureau (Survey)

Mr. Marquand: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many of the wholly-owned subsidiaries of the Iron and Steel Holding and Realisation Agency contributed towards the cost of a survey of public opinion concerning national ownership of industry which was made by the British Market Research Bureau.

Mr. Erroll: I am informed that none of the subsidiaries of the Iron and Steel holding and Realisation Agency has contributed towards the cost of the survey in question.

Mr. Marquand: Is the Economic Secretary aware that that wholly satisfactory Answer is just what I expected. Would he not now agree that the nation derives great benefit from the fact that the great firm of Richard Thomas and Baldwins remains in public ownership, selling its tinplate in all the markets of the world without the need to have recourse to "phoney" market surveys or dabbling in party politics?

Mr. Marquand: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer to what extent the Iron and Steel Holding and Realisation Agency gave its approval to subscriptions by any of the steel companies in which it holds prior charge securities to the cost of a survey of public opinion concerning the public ownership of industry which was made by the British Market Research Bureau.

Mr. Erroll: The Agency's approval was neither sought nor required.

Mr. Marquand: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that several months have now passed since I drew attention to the undesirability of the practice of firms in which no less than £172 million of public money are invested indulging in political activities? Are we to assume from his Answer that he took no steps whatever to warn them about the undesirability of the practice? If so, are we to conclude

that the Government connived at this "phoney" market research?

Mr. Erroll: The fact remains that the holding of fixed-interest securities in a company does not entitle the holder generally to interfere in matters such as this.

Mr. Marquand: We are well aware that that is the legal position, but does he not think that the Government's moral position—and honour—is involved?

Mr. Erroll: We think that our moral position involves the necessity of complying with company legislation and practice generally.

Companies (Political Activities)

Mr. Frank Allaun: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many claims he has received from steel companies during the past year for the exemption from tax of sums paid out for a campaign against steel nationalisation; and what is the total sum involved.

Mr. Simon: No such claims have been notified to the Head Office of the Inland Revenue; but the accounts received during 1958 have related to a period before the start of the "campaign" to which the hon. Member refers. I cannot, in any case, undertake to give any information about the affairs of individual taxpayers, or about such a narrow group as would amount to disclosure of the affairs of individuals in that group.

Mr. Allaun: Is the hon. and learned Gentleman aware that company accounts covering the period of this campaign must now have been submitted? [HON. MEMBERS: "Why?"] I will tell hon. Members why. It is because the campaign started before the end of the last accounting period. Is it not clear that unless this expenditure has been separately stated in those accounts it must have been merged with commercial advertising and thus have escaped Income Tax?

Mr. Simon: I am certainly not going to discuss the tax affairs of any individual concern. I would merely remind the hon. Gentleman that the accounting period for the major steel companies goes up to September.

Mr. Allaun: Exactly.

Mr. H. Morrison: Does not the Financial Secretary realise that a point of general administrative policy and principle is involved in this? Does he think it right that firms that are spending substantial sums on political activity representing their class interests should be able to get Income Tax relief and thereby get subsidisation from the Treasury for their class and political campaign at the expense of the other taxpayers? Will he not tell the House which are the firms that are doing that sort of thing?

Mr. Simon: I will be answering Question 40 about the extent to which political activities can be claimed as an expense against taxable income, but I should make it plain that, in general, expenses incurred in political activities are not deductible. The only expenses that can be deducted are those that are wholly and exclusively incurred for the purposes of the trade.

Mr. Morrison: In those circumstances, are we to conclude from what the Financial Secretary has said that the firms will not get Income Tax relief in respect of this expenditure?

Mr. Simon: No, Sir. This is a matter of the law. The law imposes a strict test, and one that was unanimously endorsed by both the Royal Commission and the Millard Tucker Committee. The test is to show that the expense was not of a capital nature and was incurred wholly and exclusively for the purposes of the trade. If that test is satisfied it is a deductible expense.

Mr. Maddan: In view of the allegations about the nature of the research referred to, is my hon. and learned Friend aware that today the Chairman of the Market Research Society has clearly stated that, from information volunteered to him, this survey is professionally within the long-established rules of the Market Research Society; and that he has further stated that if the General Secretary of the Labour Party does not welcome this assurance, he must be more anxious to generate—rather than to express—anxiety and alarm?

Mr. Simon: Yes, Sir, I have seen the report.

Mr. H. Wilson: If it is in order to refer to this particular market survey in a supplementary question, is the hon. and learned Gentleman aware that the man

who at great expense sponsored the survey himself stated at the weekend that he was holding on to the names for whatever purposes he considered fit—[HON. MEMBERS: "Why not?"]—which could include electoral purposes and possible industrial victimisation? Is he aware that for our part we welcome the statement of the market research authorities that the man who sponsored the survey was wrong?

Mr. Simon: The right hon. Gentleman always keeps his ear so close to the ground that I suppose he is bound to get it full of dirt.

Mr. H. Wilson: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he will ensure, by regulation or otherwise, that outlays of business firms for the purpose of political canvasses and political propaganda as distinct from expenditure on market research for sales and other trade purposes are not allowed to rank as business expenses in the computation of liability for Income Tax and Profits Tax.

Mr. Simon: Expenditure by a trader directed to political ends and not incurred wholly and exclusively for the purposes of his trade is not allowable in computing taxable profits.

Mr. Wilson: I welcome the statement of the hon. and learned Gentleman that, as we suspected, there was dirt in this business, but will he go into this case very carefully, bearing in mind that we are not concerned with genuine market research activities designed to promote trade, sales, exports and so forth? Will he make sure that, if the regulations are not clear, new regulations or, if necessary, new legislation will be introduced to deal with this matter and prevent these things from being done at the taxpayers' expense?

Mr. Simon: The present law is eminently reasonable and equitable. All Members of the House will agree, for example, that if there were a United Kingdom company operating abroad and subjected to an untruthful and unscrupulous campaign designed towards the expropriation of its assets it should be able to take steps to answer that campaign, and the expense of those steps should be deductible from its taxable profits.

Mr. Wilson: Since my Question did not relate either to Tate & Lyle or to any campaign to answer threats of expropriation of assets but related to an activity which, on the authority of the sponsor, was purely directed to ascertaining public opinion on certain facts, which in any case are published in the Ministry of Labour Gazette, will the hon. and learned Gentleman say what was the relevance of his answer?

Mr. Simon: Perhaps I should make plain that in any case of a political nature it is the practice of the Inland Revenue, when in any doubt, to challenge the claim for a deduction and to leave it to the taxpayer to make his case on appeal.

Mrs. Mann: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. My Question No. 68 is on all fours with Question No. 40. Why was the usual practice not adopted of answering both together today? Was it to deprive me of a supplementary?

Mr. Speaker: I do not think there is any sinister intent, I was given no notice that they would be answered together.

Mr. Woodburn: Further to that point of order. Mr. Speaker. Is it not the case that my hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge and Airdrie (Mrs. Mann) was herself personally subjected to this investigation and could, therefore, contribute something in her supplementary question?

Stock Exchange Transactions (Stamp Duty)

Mr. Grimond: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is the total amount collected by Stamp Duty on Stock Exchange transactions.

Mr. Simon: About £30 million in the current year.

Mr. Grimond: Without for one moment asking the Financial Secretary to anticipate anything at all, I should like his assurance that he will bear in mind that some reduction on this duty on small share transactions would do a great deal to spread the ownership of shares more widely.

Mr. Simon: I will draw the hon. Gentleman's observations to the attention of my right hon. Friend.

Royal Mint (Portrait Medal)

Mr. H. Wilson: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what facilities Her Majesty's Mint have given to German banking firms in connection with the issue of ducats and other gold coins bearing a portrait of Her Majesty.

Mr. Erroll: None, Sir. I should add that the pieces in question are medals and not ducats.

Mr. Wilson: Since it was stated in The Times that the German banks themselves called them ""—I put the word "ducats" in inverted commas in the Question as submitted—and since it was further stated that the Mint had co-operated by supplying facsimiles for this purpose, is the hon. Gentleman aware that his assurance that no help has been given, denying the Press statements, will be very well received, particularly since this is part of a series including coins, ducats or medals—whatever they may be—incorporating pictures of Hitler, Mussolini and others?

Mr. Erroll: I should have thought the right hon. Gentleman would have realised that it is always a rather hazardous occupation to copy out one's Questions from columns in the newspapers. [An HON. MEMBER: "Even from The Times?"] Yes, even from The Times. However, I shall be glad to put the right hon. Gentleman's mind at rest by telling him that, in response to a request, the Royal Mint gave some help to the Munich Mint, and not the German banking firms with regard to the design of a portrait medal.

Administration of Justice (Cost)

Dame Irene Ward: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is the estimated expenditure for 1958–59 over the whole field of the administration of justice.

Mr. Simon: The net cost to the Exchequer in 1958–59 of magistrates' courts, county courts, and the superior courts in England and Wales, and the corresponding Scottish courts, will be between £5 million and £51 million.

Dame Irene Ward: Will my lion. Friend add to that all the cost of the Home Office on the administration of the law, apart from the items he has dealt with, that is to say, including the


prisons, prisoners, legal defence, covering a very wide field? When he gives me that information, will he bear in mind that I am interested in people who do not break the law, and I wish to know whether there will be any money available for those who live on small fixed incomes? Further, will he say whether he is aware that I want a free chiropody service for old-age pensioners rather than more for prisoners?

Mr. Simon: If my hon. Friend wants the figure covering the whole field of crime and the prevention of crime, I can tell her that the total net cost to the Exchequer on police, prisons, probation, approved schools and so forth, as well as the courts, is about £75 million. In answer to the second part of her supplementary, I must say that I cannot anticipate my right hon. Friend's Budget statement. The answer to the third part of her supplementary question is that I was aware of her views.

ANTARCTICA

Mr. Biggs-Davison: asked the Prime Minister what further consultations he has had with President Eisenhower about the latter's proposal for a treaty on the legal status of Antarctic territories.

The Prime Minister (Mr. Harold Macmillan): Consultations about President Eisenhower's proposal concerning Antarctica have been taking place through normal diplomatic channels. The proposal did not envisage any provision relating to the legal status of Antarctic territories, except that this should remain unchanged for the duration of the treaty.

EURATOM

Mr. Mason: asked the Prime Minister if he will now make a statement about the recently concluded negotiations on the United Kingdom-Euratom Agreement; why it has been so long delayed; and to what extent this will enable British manufacturers of atomic power stations to compete fairly with the Americans in the Euratom market.

The Prime Minister: The Agreement was signed yesterday and the text was published as a White Paper. Having regard to the nature of the questions

involved. I do not think that the negotiations were unduly prolonged.
The prospects for sales of British reactors in the Euratom market will depend on commercial considerations. The established achievements of the Calder Hall prototypes, and the developments incorporated in the later commercial designs now available for export, should give British manufacturers a good prospect of success in Euratom countries.

Mr. Mason: Does not the Prime Minister realise that the Americans have already made great inroads into Euratom, in that they have poured in millions of dollars and have also imported into Euratom subsidised nuclear fuels? Is not the complacent and rather miserable attitude of the Government towards our own atomic energy industry strangling it at birth? What are the prospects within this agreement of a Ministerial Committee emerging whereby we can go from this form of co-operation to a closer association with Euratom?

The Prime Minister: In answer to the first part of the hon. Member's supplementary question, of course the position of the Americans is quite different from ours. Owing to the low cost of generating electricity in the United States from their natural resources, they are, of course, not so advanced in this matter as we are. In answer to the last part of the supplementary question, I have made it clear in my discussions, as has my right hon. Friend, that while the first stage is to consider this matter further, I am hopeful that some Ministerial investigation can be made. On the other hand, we have to consult our colleagues in the rest of the O.E.E.C. countries, and that is why we did not make a statement yesterday.

Mr. Robens: Whilst it may very well be true that we are much further forward in this sphere than the Americans, is the Prime Minister aware that not only are the Americans making great inroads, but they have, in fact, secured far more contracts for atomic power stations on the Continent of Europe than we have and that we are unlikely to secure more because the Americans are able to give the first year's fuel free of charge? Does the right hon. Gentleman regard that as fair competition, and are we able to stand up to that sort of thing?

The Prime Minister: That does make difficulties for us, but this is an expanding field. In addition to the Euratom Agreement, we have already made separate agreements with individual countries, and, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, this has emerged into an arrangement for one of the Euratom countries where a British plant is to be erected in Italy.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Mr. Gaitskell: As I understand that the Leader of the House is indisposed, may I ask the Prime Minister whether he will state the business for next week?

The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir. The business for next week will be as follows:
MONDAY, 9TH FEBRUARY—Second Reading of the Nuclear Installations (Licensing and Insurance) Bill [Lords].
Committee stage of the necessary Money Resolution.
Consideration of the Motions to approve the Agriculture Regulations relating to Circular Saws and the Safeguarding of Workplaces.
TUESDAY, 10TH FEBRUARY—Supply [1st Allotted Day]: Committee.
Consideration of the following Civil Supplementary Estimates:—
Class X, Votes 4, National Insurance and Family Allowances, and 5, National Assistance Board.
Class V, Vote 5, National Health Service, England and Wales.
Class IX, Vote 2, Roads, etc., England and Wales.
WEDNESDAY, 11TH FEBRUARY—Report and Third Reading of the Building (Scotland) Bill.
THURSDAY, 12TH FEBRUARY—A debate will take place on the European Free Trade Area, which will arise on a Government Motion to take note of the White Paper and the documents which were made available on Friday, 30th January.
FRIDAY, 13TH FEBRUARY—Consideration of Private Members' Bills.

Mr. Gaitskell: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that it is our intention that we should devote probably the whole of Tuesday's debate to Class X, Votes 4 and 5, on National Insurance and National Assistance?

Mr. Patrick Maitland: In view of the great importance of the debate on European trade, can my right hon. Friend say whether we can have an extra hour for it?

The Prime Minister: Perhaps that could be discussed in the usual way, and if it is the wish of the House, of course, the Government will accede. I think, however, that we had better ascertain the wish of the House as far as we can through the normal channels.

Mr. Albu: Has the Prime Minister's attention been drawn to the Motion on the Order Paper in the name of my hon. Friends and myself about the reactionary and extremely dangerous statement made by the Engineering and Allied Employers' National Federation, which cuts the ground from under the feet of the present responsible leaders in this industry? If so, will he give time for a discussion of that Motion?

[That this House deplores the tone of the statement, Looking at Industrial Relations, issued by the Engineering and Allied Employers' Federation, stating that they wished to fight it out with the unions even if it involved the closing down of the industry and comparing the reference of recent disputes to Courts of Inquiry with the Munich Agreement of 1938, and calls on the Government to dissociate itself from this statement.]

The Prime Minister: I do not think that it is likely that it will be possible to find time for discussion, but, of course, that, again, could be discussed in the ordinary way.

Mr. H. Hynd: Can the right hon. Gentleman say when time will be found for the Motion standing in the name of my hon. Friends and myself, about British Railways' superannuitants?

[That this House, being of opinion that exceptional hardship has resulted to British Railways superannuitants, many of whom are not in receipt of National Insurance benefits, in a period of declining money values, calls upon Her Majesty's Government to bring forward proposals for the alleviation of this hardship.]

The Prime Minister: Not next week.

Mr. S. Silverman: Has the Prime Minister's attention been called to the Motion on the Order Paper, signed by


a substantial number of my hon. Friends and myself, referring to proposals to deal with Germany and Central Europe? In view of the Prime Minister's reported intention to visit Moscow, does not he think that it would be useful, before he goes, to give the House an opportunity of considering that matter and seeing how far the proposals contained in the Motion have the support of the House of Commons?

[That this House, realising that the present international tension cannot be relieved without a solution of the problem of Germany and without a peace treaty which safeguards Germany's neighbours against a resurgence of German military aggression, would welcome the de facto recognition of the German Democratic Republic by Her Majesty's Government and the formation, by agreement between the Republic and the German Federal Republic, of an all-German Federal Council with which a treaty of peace could be negotiated, providing for the admission of a united Germany to the United Nations and her exclusion from military alliances, in pursuance of a policy of disengagement.]

The Prime Minister: I have seen the Motion, but I think that it is usual for foreign affairs debates to be arranged in the usual way, either on a Supply day or some other convenient day. No doubt, if it is the wish of the House, we would certainly consider it.

Mr. H. Wilson: Since the Anglo-Egyptian financial agreement was initialled in Cairo nearly three weeks ago, and since there are numerous anxieties and apprehensions, on both sides of the House, about what has been done under that agreement, can the Prime Minister say when it is expected to be possible to publish the terms of the agreement so that they can be debated in the House?

The Prime Minister: At present, I am merely announcing the business for next week. If the right hon. Gentleman will put down a Question, I will try to answer it.

Mr. Wilson: Is not the right hon. Gentleman aware that this Question has been tabled about seven times in the last three weeks, that the Chancellor of the

Exchequer has failed to answer it and that it was down as Question No. 42 today, but for some mysterious reason was not put?

The Prime Minister: If it was not put, that was not my fault.

Mr. Stonehouse: Has the Prime Minister's attention been called to the Motion, standing in the name of 173 right hon. and hon. Members on this side of the House, calling for an independent inquiry into conditions in Kenya prisons and detention camps? In view of the widespread concern not only in Kenya, but also in this country, about conditions in these camps, may we have time to debate this matter?

[That this House urges the Secretary of State for the Colonies to institute an independent inquiry into the conditions and administration of prisons and detention camps in Kenya, including Lokitaung Prison, Northern Province, in view of all allegations of ill treatment received from prisoners and detainees in Kenya and allegations about the conditions made by former officers of the Kenya Prison Service.]

The Prime Minister: No, Sir, not on this Motion. We could not give time for that subject, but I would remind the House that at this time of the year we are entering upon the Supply day period and the Opposition may choose a day upon which this and other colonial matters can be discussed.

Mr. Hale: Does the Prime Minister propose to give us an early date to discuss the extremely important White Paper on penal reform? Will he bear in mind that in a more limited connection this important White Paper has a direct bearing on the Street Offences Bill, which is under consideration and which makes an early debate still more desirable?

The Prime Minister: I will call this matter to the attention of my right hon. Friend who is primarily responsible for it and ensure that it does not escape his notice.

Mrs. Braddock: Further to the reply made by the Prime Minister about alleged cruelty in Kenya prisons, may I suggest to him that he take a leaf out of the book of the Home Secretary, who instigated an inquiry into much less


cruelty in one of our own prisons, and ask the Colonial Secretary to do as the Home Secretary did and inquire into these very scandalous allegations about what is happening to prisoners in Kenya?

The Prime Minister: We are now discussing what should be the business for next week, and I was pointing out that if this matter is to be raised I should have thought that a Supply day, when we discuss administration and proposed legislation, would be a suitable day.

Sir G. Nicholson: On a point of order. Has it escaped your notice, Mr. Speaker, that several times lately, notably today, the Prime Minister has not had time to answer all the Questions put down to him? I am sure that it would be the wish of the House that that should not recur, if possible. I can see the difficulty when a large number of supplementary questions are asked from all parts of the House. What is the right way for the House to proceed to bring about a change in the situation? Would you consider initiating informal discussions with a view to having the Prime Minister's Questions come on earlier?

Mr. Speaker: I cannot say to what stage Questions should continue, but I would ask the House to co-operate with me in trying to get more Questions through. Supplementaries should be made short and so should the answers. Let us have a general effort on the part of the House. I have not the slightest doubt that we would get through far more Questions if the House itself would cooperate to that end. Hon. Members cannot have it both ways in the shape of long supplementaries and a greater number of Questions answered.

Mr. Rankin: Would it not be possible to have the Prime Minister answer Questions first one day, to cheer him on his way to Moscow before he leaves?

THE PRIME MINISTER (VISIT TO SOVIET UNION)

The Prime Minister (Mr. Harold Macmillan): With permission, Mr. Speaker, I will make a statement.
I have had in mind for a long time the possibility of a visit to the Soviet Union. As the House knows, when the Soviet leaders visited this country in 1956 they

invited Sir Anthony Eden to pay a return visit to the Soviet Union. This invitation was subsequently extended to me by the Soviet Government.
Recent international developments have made me feel that a visit at the present time would be of value. On my instructions, therefore, Her Majesty's Ambassador in Moscow suggested to the Soviet Government some days ago that I should go to the Soviet Union on 21st February for a visit of a week or ten days accompanied by my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary. I am glad to tell the House that on 2nd February—that is, last Monday—the Soviet Chargé d'Affaires in London informed us that his Government welcomed this proposal. Our friends and Allies have been informed.
We are, of course, in close consultation with our Allies about how best to handle the serious issues which at present face us in Europe. On all these we act together. My right hon. and learned Friend and I will not be going to Moscow to conduct a negotiation on behalf of the West. Nevertheless, we hope that our conversations with the Soviet leaders will give them a better knowledge of our point of view and make it easier for us to understand what is in their minds. Thus, we and our Allies may be better able to judge what our policies and actions should be. Personal contacts do not in themselves solve international problems, but there are times when they may make a contribution to their solution.
There are, of course, other important aspects of this visit. There are many matters such as trade, information and cultural relations which we should hope to discuss. I shall also look forward to seeing something of the Soviet Union and the Soviet people. But my principal purpose will be to try to dispel misconceptions and to establish some basis for better understanding.
An agreed communiqué announcing the visit is being issued this afternoon in London and Moscow.

Mr. Gaitskell: Is the Prime Minister aware that if this visit which he and the Foreign Secretary are to make can break the deadlock between East and West, lead to a relaxation of tension, prepare the way for a settlement of the European security problem and help to speed on settlements


in all other directions, it will be warmly welcomed by the whole of the British people?
May I ask the Prime Minister, however, since he refers to putting, as I understood it, the point of view of the West, whether there is, in fact, a clear point of view of the West on, for example, the problem of European security? Will he be having further discussions on that question with Mr. Dulles and the French and German Governments?
May I also ask in exactly what way this visit will be related to a Summit Conference? Has the Prime Minister, for example, changed his view that a Summit Conference should not take place without very full preparation and some kind of guarantee that it will succeed? When he returns from Moscow, does he anticipate reporting to our Allies? Has anything been settled in the way of further conferences arising out of this visit?

The Prime Minister: I am grateful for the opening observations of the right hon. Gentleman. I would, however, like to make it quite clear that I could not hope that a visit of this kind could do more than inform me and, perhaps, enable me to give some impression to my hosts of some of the problems which confront us. I am not to conduct a negotiation, but something, perhaps, of the nature of a reconnaissance.
What we have to do is, with our Allies, to work out positions which might lead to the solution of the very difficult and, indeed, almost dangerous situation which may develop in Europe. I thought that it was a suitable moment to take this initiative and see whether I could be of help in that. Afterwards, I should hope to consult either in Bonn or in Paris or in Washington. Then there will be joint discussions and arrangements with a view to forming a joint policy on which we could hope to make progress in official discussions with the Russian Government.

Mr. Gaitskell: I have already made plain our general support for this visit, but may I press the Prime Minister a little further on this specific issue of Germany and European security, which is in all our minds? If he is going to Moscow to discuss these matters, is it not a rather serious disadvantage if there is not a common point of view on the side

of the West and is it not liable to be rather embarrassing to him if he cannot answer for Germany, for France, for the United States as well as for ourselves? It will obviously be embarrassing for him if he is not able to give a broad indication of the Western point of view. Will the Prime Minister therefore say whether he intends to have further consultations on this subject before he leaves for Moscow?

The Prime Minister: It would be very embarrassing, if I were trying to negotiate on behalf of all these countries, not to have a perfectly clear and fixed view which I was authorised to put forward, but that is not my purpose. We have to work that out together. We are having continual consultations. We shall have them between now and the time when I go, and I hope we shall have them after I return.
My visit is more to try to fit myself for making a good contribution to the consultations and discussions with our Allies and thereby creating a position which may be helpful in the solving of these very difficult problems, both the immediate problem of Berlin and the wider problems to which the right hon. Gentleman has referred of Germany and of European security as a whole.

Mr. Turton: While welcoming the initiative of my right hon. Friend, may I ask him to make one point clear? I understand from his statement that the acceptance of his proposal by the Soviet Government was notified on last Monday. Today is Thursday. Why was there that delay in making what is a very important and welcome announcement?

The Prime Minister: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for asking that question, because it is something about which people might well have wondered. On Monday it was agreed with the Soviet Chargé d'Affaires that the communiqué had to be settled and that it should be issued on Thursday. In addition, I wished to inform a large number of my colleagues, all the Prime Ministers of the Commonwealth and all the leaders of the Allied countries most closely working us—America, France, and so on. I had also to arrange to make a communication, which was made yesterday, to the N.A.T.O. Council.
All these are proper, correct, things to do, and they account for a rather embarrassing delay of a day or two between the thing becoming perhaps rather generally known and the time when a formal announcement could be made.

Mr. Grimond: May I wish the Prime Minister well on his journey? As I understand, this is a purely exploratory visit, but many of us may hope that it will lead to negotiations which may go on for some time. If that were to appear likely, might it not be advisable, in view of the political situation in this country and of past precedent, to associate the Leader of the Opposition with the visit?

The Prime Minister: On one occasion, on matters of defence, we have discussed relations between the Leader of the Opposition and the Head of the Government of the day. I think that they are well understood and that they work by mutual co-operation. Of course, if there were important considerations I should be only too ready and anxious to make information available to the right hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Fell: Is the Prime Minister aware that this visit follows very closely, though not exactly, the suggestion put forward by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill) in, I think, 1954, and also follows very closely the suggestion I put to him about two years go, and pressed? May I ask him whether he realises that, in spite of whatever may be said from the opposite benches, the whole of the people of this country will send with him their hearts and wishes for success in this trip?

Mr. A. Henderson: Does the right hon. Gentleman propose to include in the subjects he is to discuss with the Soviet Prime Minister the urgent importance of ending the deadlock which has arisen at the two conferences in Geneva on the suspension of nuclear tests and on the provision of safeguards against surprise attack, and which is holding up any advance in this field.

The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir. This, with other subjects, I have no doubt, will be a matter within the scope of our discussions.
I wish just to call attention once more to the character of the visit. It is partly

a return visit for one which was made here, and that is why I must ask the permission of the House to be absent for seven to ten days. It will be their desire to treat us as their guests. It is partly, at the same time, to have what I hope may be useful discussions on a wide range of subjects, including the ones which the right hon. and learned Gentleman has mentioned.

Mr. Gaitskell: With respect to the question by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond), may I say that while I appreciate his suggestion, and while I should be glad to go on a sightseeing tour of Moscow even with the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, I think it might be a little embarrassing if we found ourselves trying to conduct negotiations on foreign policy at the same time. It is not really quite the way we do things in our Parliamentary system here.

The Prime Minister: I am sure that it might be embarrassing for the right hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Osborne: As the Russian people have such a wrong impression of our point of view, and of what we want in the West, will my right hon. Friend take every opportunity which comes to him to make an appearance on Moscow T.V. and to put the point of view of the West through the Russian Press, which, so far, no Westerner has been able to do?

The Prime Minister: I think that as guests we shall try to fall in with the entertainment which is provided for us.

Mr. H. Morrison: May we take it—I am not suggesting that it should be a condition—that if the Prime Minister should be invited to broadcast or appear on television, or to meet representative sections of Russian society, as Mr. Mikoyan met representative Americans in the United States, he would readily avail himself of any such invitation?

The Prime Minister: Of course, but, as is normal practice, they very kindly asked whether we had any particular places we wished to visit or any particular programme, and we replied that we should be very glad to leave the programme in the hands of our hosts. What I am particularly anxious for is that the programme, the sightseeing and other


things, should allow plenty of time for wide discussions on those important subjects of which we must try to reach some closer knowledge at least of what our points of view are before we try to reconcile them.

Mr. Usborne: Reverting to the proposition made by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond), may I ask the Prime Minister whether he would not, in view of the precedent at Potsdam, reconsider the idea of that precedent, and, in view of what has recently happened at Southend, take the Leader of the Liberal Party with him, too?

The Prime Minister: I think, if I remember aright, that Potsdam was somehow mixed up with a General Election that was going on. None of those considerations seems to apply today.

Mr. Farey-Jones: As the common meeting ground between East and West is a matter of desperate search, would the Prime Minister endeavour, during his visit, to get complete co-operation between American, Russian and British scientists upon getting into outer space?

The Prime Minister: There are proposals which the President of the United States has made on that matter and which are now under discussion.

Mrs. Mann: May I, as a back bencher, thank the Prime Minister, wish him god-speed, and ask him the date of the General Election?

The Prime Minister: The first two the hon. Lady may certainly do, but not the third.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Proceedings of the Committee on the House Purchase and Housing Bill exempted, at this day's Sitting, from the provisions of Standing Order No. I (Sittings of the House).—[The Prime Minister.]

Orders of the Day — HOUSE PURCHASE AND HOUSING BILL

Considered in Committee [Progress, 4th February].

[Sir CHARLES MACANDREW in the Chair]

Clause 2.—(EXCHEQUER ADVANCES TO BUILDING SOCIETIES.)

Amendment proposed [4th February], In page 2, line 39, at end insert:
or in the Metropolitan Police District or the City of London, three thousand pounds."—[Mr. H. Brooke.]

Question again proposed, That those words be there inserted.

3.58 p.m.

Mr. G. R. Mitchison: When we reported Progress last night I was in process of asking the right hon. Gentleman whether he could give us a little more information as to why he had made this distinction between London and the provinces and whether he had considered the possibility of other levels in other large provincial towns.

The Minister of Housing and Local Government and Minister for Welsh Affairs (Mr. Henry Brooke): When the Bill was published, which was two months ago now, comment was made on the absence of any differential for London. To the best of my knowledge, there Rio criticism arose about any other part of the country. Of course, on the ground of general principle, it is simpler if one has no differential, because even so well-known a boundary as that of the Metropolitan Police District may have its anomalies.
I do not think, therefore, that hon. Members on either side of the Committee would wish to introduce a differentiation of this kind where there was not a clear and strong case made out for it. It appears that in London there was a substantial case, and I am glad to say that, as a result of the talks which were held after the Second Reading with the building societies, it was accepted on their side that differentiation for the Metropolitan Police District would not be unreasonable.
In the circumstances, I would advise the Committee that we should make this difference, but not complicate the arrangements by creating differences elsewhere,


for which there does not seem to be any call. I think that the Bill will work well if we have this single different limit for the Greater London area.

Mr. John M. Temple: Yesterday the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, when we were discussing another matter, drew attention to the difficulty of drawing a line. Yesterday my right hon. Friend, in moving this Amendment, referred to a wise differentiation. Now, it is said that it would be simpler to have no differentiation. Unless it is absolutely necessary—and I am not sure that it is necessary—I cannot see that there should be a differentiation at all.
I know that in the Rent Act there is a differentiation of 33; per cent. between the London area and the provincial area, and here we are visualising a differentiation of 20 per cent. These things seem to me to create precedents which, if we are not careful, will become principles; and it will be a principle that there is a difference in values of a certain degree between London and provincial areas. I should prefer to see one value over the whole country, but I would not go so far as to say that it is necessary in the provinces to have this figure quite as high as £3,000.
However, when one considers the fact that the basis of valuation will be the valuer's valuation of the particular property, and that the Bill is applicable to owner-occupiers, the most important factor is the figure at which the valuer values the property. I believe that, for the sake of uniformity, my right hon. Friend should have a further look at this point between now and Report.
Unless it can be said without any doubt that this differentiation is necessary, it should be omitted. The more we create these precedents the more difficulties we may have in other spheres as between calculations affecting the London area and those affecting the provinces. I very much favour uniformity and I hope that my right hon. Friend will be able to have a further look at this matter with a view to securing uniformity throughout the country.

Mr. Jack Jones: On a point of order. Have the proceedings of the Committee on the Bill been

exempted from the provisions of Standing Order No. 1 (Sittings of the House)? Was that Motion moved, Sir Charles?

The Chairman: That was carried. The House agreed to that.

Mr. Ellis Smith: Can we be quite sure, Sir Charles?

Mr. Jones: May we be absolutely certain that the Motion was moved from the Government Front Bench?

The Chairman: It did not concern me very much, but the Motion came before Orders of the Day.

Mr. Jones: I do not want to be awkward—it is the last thing in my nature—but I want to be certain. As one who has sat in the Chamber from the beginning of today's proceedings—in fact, I was at Prayers—it is not within my recollection, or the recollection of some of my hon. Friends, that the Motion was moved.

Mr. Brooke: Perhaps, as the senior member of the Government present, I can assist. I can assure the Committee that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister moved the Motion.

Mr. Ede: And it was put from the Chair and carried.

The Chairman: Yes, I do not think that there is any question about it at all.

Mr. W. R. Rees-Davies: I should like, very shortly, to take up the time of the Committee on the question of whether £2,500 or £3,000 is the right figure in the Clause to apply throughout the country. There is a strong case for the differentiation between London and the rest of the country, made out by the Minister, though I have some sympathy with the arguments which my hon. Friend the Member for the City of Chester (Mr. Temple) has adduced.
There are, particularly in the seaside resorts, a considerable number of owner-occupied houses which are, nevertheless, of a boarding-house type. I speak not merely for my own constituency, but, I think, for all seaside resorts and all that class of property, which, in the main, is late Victorian or Edwardian. The property comes within the ambit of the


Bill, but in most cases the valuations are about £2,800 to £3,000. The occupiers are mostly people living on small fixed incomes who have retired and who may well want to take up very substantial mortgages. I ask my right hon. Friend to look at the question closely and consider whether a figure of £3,000 would not be better than one of £2,500.
I had an Amendment on the Notice Paper to that effect and yesterday evening the then occupant of the Chair indicated that it would be a proper one to be discussed in calling the Amendment which is now before the Committee. Therefore, I invite my right hon. Friend, without necessarily giving any detailed reply now, to reconsider the matter between now and Report and particularly, if he would be so good, to make some inquiries from these seaside resort areas, where we are dealing with rather large properties of a value of £3,000 or just under, whether such a provision may not be of substantial assistance to retired persons. Many of them are well-known trade union people from the Midlands and the North who have retired and who want money on mortgage because of shortage of capital, although they intend to work and give other forms of collateral security as may be required.

Mr. J. A. Sparks: I should be glad if the Minister would explain further a point in connection with the maximum amount which he is now fixing, namely, £3,000 in the Metropolitan area and £2,500 outside that area. It is true, generally speaking, that the pre-1919 houses will have a lower valuation than the more recent and modern ones, and £3,000 seems to me a rather high figure. In some areas of London one can acquire a fairly good modern house at that price.
I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman is not going beyond the bounds of what we understand to be the intention of the Bill, namely, to allow a normal family to acquire ownership of a pre-1919 house. A sum of £3,000 for a pre-1919 house, which might be sixty, seventy or eighty years old or more, seems to me a rather high figure. Generally speaking, it would be a fairly large house. Are we satisfied that the accommodation would not be more than the applicant and his

family would require? Are we quite sure that this public money will not be used for business and commercial purposes?
The hon. Member for the Isle of Thanet (Mr. Rees-Davies) referred to boarding houses. Is it intended that public money should be used to finance boarding houses? It might well be that a house valued at £2,500 in certain parts of the country and £3,000 in London would be so large and the accommodation would be so much more than the applicant required that he would be seeking to secure the advance for a commercial or business proposition. Incidentally, he would not only acquire for himself the ownership of the house, but would proceed to do something more, to enter into a form of business, to use the house for business purposes in the sense of letting and sub-letting.
If that is the intention of the Minister, we ought to know. I do not think that anyone would object to public funds being made available to house families in normal dwellings sufficient for their purpose. I know that the situation is not the same in all parts of the Metropolitan area, nor is it the same in every part of the country. For instance, seaside places vary very much as compared with the inland areas. This figure, however, seems to be high and if the right hon. Gentleman could reaffirm the main intention of the Bill, which is to help the normal family to acquire ownership of their own house, and that public funds are not intended to be used to run a business in such a house, we would be satisfied.
At present, we are not clear where is the line of demarcation between the one and the other. I do not think that the limit of £3,000 inside and £2,500 outside the Metropolitan Police District is that deadline limit as between the one and the other.

Mr. Albert Evans: I do not wish to detain the Committee, since this is not a very important part of the Bill, but the Minister is raising the limit for the Metropolitan Police District and the City of London. The hon. Gentleman the Member for the Isle of Thanet (Mr. Rees-Davies) wishes the higher figure to be extended to places on the coast—

Mr. Rees-Davies: No, generally.

Mr. Evans: I see, he wishes that figure to be applied generally throughout the country.
The same point was made by his hon. Friend the Member for the City of Chester (Mr. Temple). I am doubtful about the upward tendency. We must be careful not to give people the idea that houses are worth more and more every day. We do not wish to encourage extravagantly high prices, particularly for this class of property, so we should be careful about raising the limit, especially in the Metropolitan Police District, because, despite all the claims made by the Minister, the houses in this area have a scarcity value.
There are not enough houses, there is considerable overcrowding, the housing problem is nowhere near solved and, because there is that scarcity value, we must be even more careful not to create the impression in the minds of the public that £3,000 is the current price which should be paid for old property. I am sure that the Minister has got my point, even if he does not agree with all my comments.

Mr. H. Brooke: I think that I have taken the point made by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Islington, South-West (Mr. A. Evans). The fact that some of my hon. Friends think that the Government have not gone far enough, and that some hon. Gentlemen opposite fear that the Government have gone too far, suggests that we have probably hit the mark in the middle. If we were to adopt the suggestion that £3,000 was a fair limit for the whole country, I would bet my bottom dollar that somebody would come along on the Report stage and say that if we fix £3,000 for the whole country we ought to establish for London the Rent Act ratio of four-to-three and put it at £4,000 for London.
My hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Thanet (Mr. Rees-Davies) asked me to think further on this point between now and the Report stage. The Government have thought about this carefully since the Bill was published, and it would be misleading if I were to suggest that the matter might be open for further alterations later. I do not want to lead people to think that there are possibilities which might eventuate when, in fact, they will not. We have considered this carefully and we believe that this is the wisest course to follow and that it is right to have

this differentiation between Greater London and the rest of the country.
4.15 p.m.
With regard to the argument that a figure of £3,000 in London is opening the door to commercial and industrial purchases, perhaps the hon. Member for Acton (Mr. Sparks) would be good enough to look at the White Paper. One must bear in mind all the time the agreement reached with the Building Societies Association as to the manner in which this scheme will be worked. The hon. Gentleman will see that at every point there it is stated that the money will be advanced on houses for owner-occupation. There can be no question of houses being bought under this scheme for industrial or commercial purposes.
We should bear in mind that though this Clause is dealing specifically only with the advancing of public money on the pre-1919 houses it is apparent from the White Paper that the building societies are willing to extend 95 per cent. mortgages, subject to certain conditions and as far as their funds will allow, to the houses built between 1919 and 1940. There will not be Government money provided for that purpose, but if the Committee will consider the matter I think hon. Members will realise that this Amendment will have substantial effect and value in that respect in the Greater London area.
In fact, there are not very many houses built between the wars which one could buy in Greater London for less than £2,500, but there are considerable numbers between £2,500 and £3,000, and in that range we shall be giving a considerable advantage as a result of making this Amendment if it is taken in connection with the agreement.

Mr. Frederic Harris: May I ask the Minister a question? Taking the Croydon area as a whole, we would welcome this proposal, because if the limit were not raised to £3,000, a large proportion of our houses would not qualify. I put the point to my right hon. Friend that in confining anything to the Metropolitan Police District we have sometimes run into trouble in Croydon because, although the major part of greater Croydon comes within the


Metropolitan Police District, some part of it does not. Is there any additional definition under this Amendment of which house would qualify and which would not?

Mr. Brooke: If I say that in the Metropolitan Police District one always runs into trouble, I might be misinterpreted, but I shall be within the recollection of the Committee in saying that the Metropolitan Police District perimeter is not a wholly satisfactory boundary. Building has stretched across it, and the reason for keeping it is that it is extremely difficult to arrive at any other boundary. Whatever alterations one made one would be setting up fresh anomalies.
The Government looked at this point at the time of the Rent Bill. I remember that there was an Amendment moved then by one of my hon. Friends to suggest that in relation to his constituency the boundary might be altered and made apparently more rational. I had to resist it on the ground that it is impossible to draw a boundary round the built-up area of London that would be wholly satisfactory and that could be guaranteed to remain satisfactory.
In those circumstances, as everybody is accustomed to working with the Metropolitan Police District as a basis for various purposes, I suggest that it is better to try to put up with these anomalies rather than to create others.

Mr. Ede: I defined the Metropolitan Area in the Police Act, 1946, and I am surprised to hear the hon. Member for Croydon, North-West (Mr. F. Harris) say that greater Croydon, whatever that may be, stretches across the boundary. As far as I know, every parish which touches any part of Croydon is in the Metropolitan Police District.

Mr. F. Harris: I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that I was under the impression that this was not so.

The Chairman: The point does not arise here.

Amendment agreed to.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill.

Miss Margaret Herbison: There are one or two points that

I should like the Minister to make clear. Talking about this application being to pre-1919 houses on Second Reading, the right hon. Gentleman said:
This was a clearly definable class. It was was also the class, as I explained earlier, in which the applicant at present finds greatest difficulty in getting a mortgage, because the building societies, with their present limited funds, not unnaturally tend to lend more freely on newer houses than on older houses, which may be a more doubtful risk."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 15th December, 1958; Vol. 597, c. 792.]
The Secretary of State for Scotland, when he intervened, pointed out that out of 1,600,000 houses in Scotland only 300,000 were owner-occupied, and he said that he hoped that as a result of the provisions in the Bill we could increase that number. Many of us on this side of the Committee are a little worried about the matter. On the Government Front Bench is the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, who represents a Glasgow constituency, knows Glasgow very well and also knows the type of house which is vacant in Glasgow at this time, when so many people are desperately in need of houses. When the Bill becomes an Act, will that kind of house be sold with the help of Government funds? We think it wrong that Government funds should be used to help provide mortgages for houses which, we feel, will only be a continuing burden on people.
We were told by the Minister on Second Reading that the building societies would be examining every application on its merits. What is involved in that? Is it merely the creditworthiness of the applicant, or will there be a severe examination of the house, which might ensure that these houses are not helped by public money to pass from landlords who have kept them vacant for a very long time, when people were desperately in need of houses, to become continuing burdens on the people who get them?
On Second Reading, my hon. Friend the Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence) asked the Minister what the effect would be on decontrolled houses. He asked whether, if there was still a tenant in the house and a mortgage was provided and the house changed hands, because the house was decontrolled, the tenant could be evicted. I should like to have some assurance on that subject, because no assurance has yet been given.


We were merely told that this was a Bill to help people buy houses. We ought to have some assurance, particularly because the housing position in Scotland is so much worse than in the rest of the United Kingdom.
I want also to refer to a subject which was debated at some length yesterday, the question of the creditworthiness of women and women almost always being asked for a male guarantor. Have we any evidence that this is happening in Scotland? When the Minister of Housing and Local Government made his inquiries, were any inquiries made by the Secretary of State for Scotland?

Mr. Graham Page: I wish to return briefly to the question of the interest payable by the building societies on the Treasury loans under the Clause. In subsection (1) it is provided that interest on the loans from the Treasury
shall be payable at such rates and at such times, as the Minister may with the approval of the Treasury direct.
We are told in the scheme agreed by the Building Societies Association that the rate of interest charged on the Exchequer loans will be related to the rate of interest recommended by the Association for mortgages for private houses for owner-occupation and will be½ per cent. lower than this rate.
I think that to include it in regulations is the right way to do it; it will be flexible and the rate can be adjusted from time to time. The Committee was correct in rejecting an Amendment yesterday which would have fixed the rate in the Act. I would have hoped that the Opposition would have allowed my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Mr. Maurice Macmillan) to withdraw the Amendment, so that we might have returned to the subject at a later stage of the Bill, when the Minister might have been able to meet some of the important points raised on this subject.

Mr. Mitchison: The Amendment would have allowed the rate to be reduced below that recommended by the Building Societies Association. It would not have fixed it.

Mr. Page: It would have bound the Treasury to a certain rate in the Measure rather than leaving it flexible under regulations. I remember the hon. and

learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) saying yesterday that the Opposition intended to vote on the question of principle. If he had been serious over that he might have allowed my hon. Friend to withdraw the Amendment, so that the principle could be considered at a later stage of the Bill.
Nevertheless, I hope that the Minister will have more comforting words to say to us on this subject today, because there is very real concern about the interest payable under mortgages to owner-occupiers. Over the past year or so the interest rates have been fluctuating and the attention of people has been drawn to the rate of interest charged and considerable concern has been shown by borrowers who have had higher rates of interest imposed on them. The building societies have had to charge the higher rates of interest in order to get money into the "kitty."
However, with the greatest respect to the Building Societies Association, if a society finds that it can lend at a lower interest rate than that recommended by the Association it should not for that reason be excluded from this scheme, as it would be under the agreement with the Association as it now stands; and I presume that the regulations to be made under the Clause will be in accordance with the agreement.
4.30 p.m.
A minimum would have to be fixed. One could not allow a society to lend to borrowers at 1 per cent. and then demand that the Treasury lend it money at½ per cent. However, I should have thought that some sort of minimum could have been fixed by some provision that the amount loaned to buyers of pre-1919 houses should be at a rate of interest not less than that chargeable to other borrowers, so as to prevent a building society charging a low rate of interest on pre-1919 houses and then claiming from the Treasury a loan at½ per cent, less than that low rate.
I should have thought that some provision could be made to meet—and we can use the Halifax Building Society as an example—building societies which find themselves able to lend at lower rates of interest than the Building Societies Association recommends and which want to come into the scheme. I hope that they will not be prevented from coming


into the scheme because of their being efficient building societies and able to lend at low rates of interest. I trust that my right hon. Friend will be able to say something about that matter.

Mr. Maurice Macmillan: I apologise for taking up even more time on the subject of rates of interest, but I do so because I share the view of my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Page) about the importance of the principle involved.
We all accept the practical difficulties of altering arrangements set out in the White Paper, since this is an agreed scheme. I am not very sorry that the Clause must go forward without reference to interest rates in the Bill itself, but I accept with great reluctance that it should do so with so little assurance from the Minister. I must ask him again whether he cannot, at his leisure, consider with the building societies, even after adequate experience of working the scheme, whether a method could not be discovered not only of not discouraging societies from lowering their mortgage rates, but even encouraging them to do so.
Appendix I of the White Paper says that all building societies participating in the scheme will be charged the same rates. Since it is an agreed scheme, it will be appreciated that it will take some time and some new evidence to enable the Building Societies Association to change its mind and agree to another plan. However, in the White Paper there is ample provision far the mechanics of amending the scheme.
I hope that my right hon. Friend will not entirely preclude a system of different rates of interest to different societies when he applies subsection (1). Although the societies are competing with each other, they are not competing in any way which is affected by rates of interest. If the average costs are 12s. per cent. and they are getting 10s. per cent., whatever rates of interest are provided, the differential remains the same and they are operating this part of the scheme at a loss, any benefit drawn from the scheme lying in the release of other funds for other business. The extent to which other funds are released is limited by subsection (2) and the amount so released is not affected by rates of interest.
It is true that that might lead to unequal benefit for mortgagees, but I

do not see why that is to be so greatly deplored. It gives potential home-buyers a greater freedom of choice, a freedom of choice where they now have very little. It is an active encouragement to building societies to lower their interest rates. However distant the reconsideration of the method of applying the Clause, I hope that my right hon. Friend will not entirely close his mind to that reconsideration.

Mr. Mitchison: We did not divide on the Second Reading of the Bill, and I shall not advise my hon. Friends to divide on this Question. On Second Reading, I said something about the position of local authorities in relation to building societies. I still adhere to the opinions I then expressed. I regret that in the one case local authorities are dependent on the rates of interest charged by the Government and, in loans under the Housing Acts, on matters approved by the Minister, while the dictating power in this case appears to be the Council of the Building Societies Association.
I said on Second Reading that the difference of ½ per cent. between the rate charged by the Government to the building societies and the rate at which the building societies undertake advances is a large margin in relation to the amount allowed to local authorities. It may well be that local authorities should be allowed a little more instead of the building societies being permitted a little less, but I shall not deal with that now.
It is a fair comment on the Clause as a whole that these arrangements represent certain advantages to the building societies which are not open to local authorities when they try do exactly the same thing. That is especially true of smaller local authorities, who very often have some difficulty and encounter obstacles in raising the money they wish to use for this purpose. That is one of the reasons why not so much use has been made of the Small Dwellings Acquisition Acts and, to a lesser extent, similar provisions under the Housing Acts, as some of us would have wished.
I am rather at a loss to know the guiding principle of two hon. Members opposite, the hon. Member for Halifax (Mr. Maurice Macmillan) and the hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Page). Is it the principle which led the former to move an Amendment, or the principle which led him to ask leave to withdraw


it? That is an interesting philosophical speculation which might be left to another occasion, but hon. Members on this side regard building societies rates and the rates which are necessarily charged on advances on houses, even by local authorities, as unduly high. We regard that as one of the unfortunate consequences of the credit squeeze period of the Government's financial policy, and we have not got out of the credit squeeze yet. Many people suffered by having to borrow at very high rates during that period.
I do not know what is happening to the Bank Rate today, or what will happen next Thursday, or the Thursday after that, and it is not my business to know or to speculate about it. I simply say that from the point of view of the person desiring to borrow from a building society or local authority, one nigger in the woodpile is the question of the deposit, with which we are not now concerned, and another is the rate of interest which he has to pay. The Government's financial policy is directly responsible for rates being as high as they are. They were much lower when we were in power.

Mr. Sparks: The only suggestion that the right hon. Gentleman has made in respect of the rate of interest for public money is that it should be½ per cent. below what the Building Societies Association decides from time to time. Why has he fixed that rate? It looks very much as though the Treasury will make a profit on the transaction. From where is it to raise this public money? It will raise it from the market. The Government do not pay 5½per cent. for the money it requires; at the moment, the Bank Rate is 4 per cent. I cannot be precise about the rate of interest at which the Government borrow the money they require, but it is certainly not 5½ per cent.; it is much nearer 4 per cent. The Treasury will borrow this money, on the one hand, at a rate of about 4 per cent. and lend it to the building societies at a rate of 5½per cent.
That ought not to be the policy of the Government. Surely this is a social problem. It ought not to be regarded as a financial transaction, and as a means of making a profit. The Government could well have made this money available to the building societies at a very small

fraction of 1 per cent. above the cost of their acquiring it. That would have enabled the public money to have been advanced to the building societies at a rate much lower than 5½ per cent.
That would have been some incentive to the Building Societies Association to reduce the minimum rate of interest to be charged on moneys advanced for house purchase, because it would have been receiving the advantage of an investment income of about £100 million, at a rate of interest of 4¼ per cent. or 4½ per cent., and that could have been offset against the higher rate that it would have had to pay on other forms of investment. There would be no reason why the Association should not fix its rate of interest to borrowers upon the basis of the difference between the rate of interest it had to pay to the Government and to other investors, and to have given the borrowers the advantage of Government assistance.
There is no advantage to the house purchaser in this proposal. The right hon. Gentleman has not explained what profit the Treasury will make out of the advances made to the building societies. I am sure that it will make a profit, by charging the building societies a higher rate of interest than what it has to pay in the money market. Therefore, we cannot be very proud of this Clause.
Hon. Members on this side of the Committee have always regarded housing as a social problem, and the problem with which we are now dealing is a housing problem. Most of those who live in pre-1919 and older houses are not wealthy people but those in the lower income groups, simply because the older houses are usually let at lower rents and their values are lower. They ought to receive the advantage of as low a rate of interest as possible on money advanced to them to buy their own houses.
I cannot see that there is a great deal in the Clause for the right hon. Gentleman to praise, because it is purely and simply a financial transaction which will bring a profit to the Treasury. If that is not so, I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will tell us. Perhaps he will tell us at what rate the Government will borrow this money from the market to advance it to the building societies. This is a valid point. If the Treasury is to make a profit out of the transaction the main purposes of the Bill will not be achieved.

4.45 p.m.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. J. Nixon Browne): I hope that the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) will excuse me if I do not go further into the question of local authorities versus building societies, or discuss the merits of the credit squeeze policy in terms of the value of sterling.
The hon. Member for Acton (Mr. Sparks) asked me a question. Since the Government are lending for twenty years they should match that by twenty years' borrowing, and if they go into the market for twenty years they will be borrowing at about 5½ per cent. The hon. Member's talk of a rate of 4 per cent. would refer to only relatively short-term loans.

Mr. Sparks: It is not usual for money to be raised by the Treasury on the basis of a 20-year loan.

Mr. Browne: I do not think that there is a "yes" or "no" answer, but I can assure the hon. Member that the taxpayer will make little or no profit. Even so, I cannot see anything wrong in the taxpayer making a profit out of a transaction.
My hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Page) also asked me a question. He will find the answer in the White Paper, at the bottom of Page 5, in Appendix I, which says:
Provision will be made for the scheme to be reviewed at three months' notice at the request of either the Minister or the Building Societies Association…
My hon. Friend asked my right hon. Friend to say some comforting words. I have consulted my right hon. Friend, and he tells me that he regrets that he has nothing to add to the comforting words which he has already uttered. My hon. Friend also raised the question of the societies lending at lower rates than those of the Association. He must be mistaken, because they are not excluded from the scheme because they choose to lend at lower rates.

Mr. Page: I said that they were being excluded in effect.

Mr. Browne: This is a question of commercial wisdom and competition. It is for each society to decide what its policy shall be.
My hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Mr. Maurice Macmillan) spoke on the same point, and suggested that it might be a good idea not to have the

same Treasury rates in all cases. This is a most important principle, and one on which the Government simply could not give way. If the taxpayer gave more favourable help to one society than another he would be placed in an absolutely impossible position. We can disagree as to what the rates should be, but I am convinced that we have found the best method of fixing the rate.

Mr. A. Evans: The hon. Member has said that the Treasury could not give more favourable rates to one society than to another, but that would not be the position, because the society would have to lend money with ½ per cent. added to the Treasury rate. Will he explain to the Committee the practical administrative difficulties of varying the rate charged to different societies according to the rates that they charge the borrowers?

Mr. Browne: We could not possibly do that. We do not want taxpayer assistance in a competitive market such as this. I am convinced that the Government's policy provides the only possible way.
The hon. Lady the Member for Lanarkshire, North (Miss Herbison) asked three questions. She asked, first, about vacant houses. The hon. Lady was worried about what would happen about the sort of house which she and I know exists in Scotland. This is simply a commercial proposition from the point of view of the building societies and I do not think we can visualise the really bad type of house, which we know exists in Scotland, being the subject of a loan from a building society. Building societies must bear in mind the quality of the building upon which a loan is raised as well as the security represented by the borrower. I am sure that we should not find building societies allowing people to purchase that type of house; or, indeed, people who can afford to go to building societies attempting to buy that type of house.
There are many properties, which may properly be referred to as tenement properties, which are in quite good condition and the Bill will help many people to purchase perfectly good houses

Miss Herbison: The Minister says that this will be a commercial transaction. But because the position in Glasgow is so


serious, may I ask whether the Government have any power to step in when public money is being used to purchase the kind of house with which he and I are familiar?

Mr. Browne: The answer is that under the Bill the Government have no power. But, of course, the scheme may be looked at from time to time, as I said earlier. We must wait to see what happens.
The hon. Lady asked whether assistance could be given under the Bill in the case of a house in which there was a tenant. The building society scheme is restricted to owner-occupiers, so the answer is, "No". Thirdly, the hon. Lady asked about the making of loans to ladies, or asking ladies to get loans guaranteed. We have had no complaints about this matter from Scotland and we have made no investigations.

Miss Herbison: The Minister has said that help under the Bill is for owner-occupiers. I am aware of that. I put a different question to the hon. Gentleman. A person may own a number of these pre-1919 houses and wish to sell one or more. There is already a tenant in a house which the owner proposes to sell. The new owner of the house may wish to become the owner-occupier and, the house being decontrolled, the person already in occupation as a tenant may find himself out in the street. Is there any protection provided against that sort of thing?

Mr. Browne: I do not wish to give a direct answer to that question now. I should like to examine the matter. The intention is that the scheme shall apply only to owner-occupiers. I should like notice of the hon. Lady's question.

Miss Herbison: But the Government have had notice since 5th December, when my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence) raised this question. It is more than a month ago.

Mr. Browne: If the hon. Lady is asking whether a tenant can buy a house, the answer is that a tenant can buy.

Miss Herbison: It seems that the Minister is having difficulty in understanding me. I have tried to put the matter as simply as I can. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman had better listen, so that he will know what I am asking him about.
Suppose there is a house occupied by a tenant and not by an owner-occupier. Under previous Acts passed by this Government, the house has become decontrolled and the owner wishes to sell it. It is bought by someone who wishes to be the owner-occupier, and, because the house is decontrolled, he can evict the person who is living in it. Is there any protection at all for the tenant who is evicted?

Mr. Browne: That would depend entirely on the lease which the occupier has.

Mr. Sparks: The hon. Gentleman did not answer the point put to him about the rate at which the Government borrow money. He tried to infer that if the Government borrowed in the open market, they would have to pay the same for the money as they are now to charge the building societies. Will the hon. Gentleman explain why it is that the Government are inviting money from investors in National Savings Certificates and receiving quite a substantial amount each year? Over the whole period of seven years the Government paid, on average, interest at 4½ per cent. If that money is used for this purpose at a rate of 5½ per cent., the Treasury is making a profit of 1¼ per cent.

Mr. H. Brooke: Since an hon. Member representing an English constituency has raised this matter, may I say that the purpose of the Government, broadly speaking, is that the Exchequer shall neither gain nor lose. It is true that Savings certificates are issued at an apparent rate of, let us say, 4½ per cent. But they are free of Income Tax, and, grossed up, the figure would be about 7¼ per cent.
The only fair comparison is between the rate at which the Exchequer will be lending in present circumstances and the rate at which the Exchequer would be borrowing for a similar period, which is twenty years. With the recommended rate of the Building Societies Association at 6 per cent., the Exchequer would be lending at 5½ per cent. If the hon. Member will refer to his copy of the Financial Times, he will see that Government loans for a 20-year maturity are bought on a 5½ per cent. basis at present.

Mr. G. W. Reynolds: The Minister said that this is an imaginative Bill which would enable a number


of people to purchase houses of this kind. In this Clause we are dealing with £100 million which, as I see it, will probably provide mortgages for between 60,000 and 70,000 houses. So that all we are discussing is how to help with mortgages for 60,000 to 70,000 houses. There are between 6 million and 7 million houses which were built before 1919, so we are discussing a very small proportion of the total.
We have also been told that the building societies are at present advancing about £40 million to £50 million on this type of property each year. If they continue advances at the same level, and take all the money from the Exchequer, we are, in the Bill, providing the money for the same number of purchases per year to continue for the short period of two or three years. If the Minister hopes that this will enable more people to find accommodation, it should be remembered that we are providing money for the scheme for only fifteen or sixteen months. That is the magnitude of what is being provided under the provisions of the Bill. It amounts to assistance for 60,000 to 70,000 house purchasers over a period of about fifteen months. Yet to do that we have to go through all this rigmarole of trustee status and the rest.

Mr. H. Brooke: The hon. Member could hardly be more wrong. He has fallen into the opposite error to that into which one of his hon. Friends fell yesterday. I think that it was the hon. Member for Acton (Mr. Sparks) who spoke as though the £100 million was to be spent per annum and compared it directly with the £400 million of advances now made by the building societies.
The hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Reynolds) has spoken as if the £100 million was an all-time limit. I made clear earlier that the Government thought there ought to be a financial ceiling set in the Bill—not with the idea that it should be a permanent ceiling for all time, but because this Bill is a novel Measure. It seemed desirable to the Government that, before the £100 million was used up, they should come back to Parliament to ask for the ceiling to be raised. This would provide an opportunity for a review of the working of the Bill after eighteen months, or whatever the period might be.
5.0 p.m.
I can say, in the name of the Government, that there is no thought in their minds of cutting this off after the £100 million is spent, unless Parliament at that time decides—

Mr. Mitchison: The right hon. Gentleman will not be in that position.

Mr. Brooke: I may not be in the same Ministerial position, but I shall certainly be on this side of the House. I speak for the Government of the day, which will also be the Government of that day, when I say that the £100 million is in the Bill solely to ensure that Parliament keeps control of public money.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 3.—(POWER OF LOCAL AUTHORITIES TO ADVANCE FULL VALUE OF HOUSES.)

The Chairman: The first Amendment on the Paper, in the name of the Minister of Housing and Local Government and Minister for Welsh Affairs, in page 4, line 5, at the end, to add:
(2) So much of the said section forty-three and of the said section seventy-five as prevents the making of an advance thereunder in respect of a house the estimated value of which or of the fee simple of which exceeds five thousand pounds shall cease to have effect.
is out of place. It should come as the last Amendment to Clause 3. We will therefore take the Government Amendment after the Amendment in the name of the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison), in page 4, line 5, at the end to, add a new Proviso.

Mr. Sparks: I beg to move, in page 4, line 5, at the end, to add:
Provided that a local authority may require the immediate repayment of part or the whole of any advance made by virtue of this section if a part (but not the whole) of the house in respect of which the advance has been made is let or sublet without the consent of the authority.
I welcome this part of Clause 3 as it stands, because it enables local authorities from now on to advance 100 per cent. of the valuation on dwellings for the purposes of loans under the Small Dwellings Acquisition Acts and other Acts of Parliament which permit local authorities to advance money for house purchase. My Amendment is designed to


establish some form of control of the use of the accommodation for which this public money is to be provided.
Generally speaking, this money is advanced on the understanding that the house is for owner-occupation, but there is nothing which says that the owner must occupy the whole of the accommodation. It frequently arises that advances are made to applicants for owner-occupation of accommodation which is too large for their purposes. In an area where the housing problem is acute I do not think that the local authorities would raise objection to such an applicant asking permission for the letting of one or two rooms which might be surplus to his requirements. Although local authorities —I believe building societies do so as well—endeavour to place in their contracts the condition that permission must first be obtained before subletting takes place, local authorities have no power to prevent subletting on grounds other than those which affect the stability or security of their money. I understand that a local authority cannot refuse a reasonable request to sublet any part of such accommodation if it is surplus to requirements.
When application is made by a borrower for permission to sublet, the local authority has to consider whether subletting advances or retards the security of the loan involved. If the local authority were to refuse permission and the applicant felt that permission was unreasonably withheld, I understand that he could go to the court and appeal against the local authority, and that on such an appeal the local authority could not argue moral grounds as the basis of its refusal. The only argument that would be entertained by the court would be whether or not the proposed subletting detrimentally affected the security of the money invested by the local authority in the property concerned.
What we must safeguard is the use of public money for excessive subletting of rooms or houses. Would it be possible for an applicant to buy a house by way of loan from the local authority and then let out each room separately, either as furnished or unfurnished accommodation, and to confine his own accommodation to one or two rooms which he might say were enough for his purposes? If

so, that would be an abuse of the facilities which the Committee is now considering. It might lead, in areas of scarcity of accommodation, to a serious element of profiteering in view of the present high standards of rent, particularly for furnished accommodation.
Indeed, in some districts, people buy dwelling-houses and sublet each room and they are profiteering to a very considerable extent. A case was brought to my notice the other day of two small rooms in a ten-roomed house which were let for three guineas a week. In that one house were three separate families, out of four families living in the house, paying between them nine guineas a week for two rooms each. They were also paying a proportion of the rates and something for internal decoration and repairs.
It is not right that public money should be made available for that kind of thing. One can understand money being advanced by local authorities to an applicant for owner-occupation of a house which he requires for himself and his family. There is no objection to that; but is the local authority to be asked by two adults for money to buy a ten-roomed house for which they have no use, and half or three-quarters of which they propose to sublet? Is that the purpose and intention of the Government in bringing forward this Clause?
Although, in certain circumstances, the local authority insists that there shall be no sub-letting of any part of the premises without its consent, and bearing in mind the fact that the weakness of that is that the local authority could not unreasonably withhold consent, what I should like to establish is that anyone who does receive public money to acquire a house shall not sub-let any part of that house without the knowledge and consent of the local authority. That is so that the local authority may use its powers of moral persuasion, in cases which it is felt are bordering on the profiteering principle, to say "This is too bad; you are really doing too much of this sort of thing, because you are letting more of the house than you ought to let," or "You are charging a rent which is not a fair and reasonable rent." My Amendment would be directed to those persons who ignore the local authority and do not ask that authority's permission to sub-let, but,


having received the money and acquired the house, proceed to let every room in the house and to charge unreasonable rents to sub-tenants.
I do not know whether my Amendment adequately covers the point which I have endeavoured to raise, and I should like the Parliamentary Secretary to throw some light on this aspect of the problem. I can assure him that in many areas where the housing problem is serious, where there is a desperate shortage of accommodation, and where the demand for rooms, furnished as well as unfurnished, is very great, there should be some sort of curb on excessive profiteering in the subletting of furnished and unfurnished accommodation in dwellings for the acquision of which public money has been subscribed.
I submit that can be achieved only by having it established that, if any person does proceed to do what I have said without the knowledge and consent of the local authority, and has, in fact, made something of a business of it, the local authority should be entitled to call in the loan or a portion of the loan on that account.
If we can, conversely, strengthen the conditions so as to lay an obligation upon the borrower to ask permission from the local authority before he proceeds to sublet, the local authority could be given the power to say that it feels that the proposals are unreasonable, not so much in relation to the security of its money, because, from the local authority point of view, the security of the money would be enhanced thereby, because of the owner's increased income by sub-letting, and, generally, there would be no trouble about the security of the money invested. I should like to have the principle established that the local authority shall have the power to be able to say that it regards such a proposition as unreasonable, in the sense that too much of the accommodation is being alienated by the borrower, and that, in its opinion, the rents proposed to be charged are excessive.
Therefore, I think the local authority ought to have some power to secure, first of all, if there is more accommodation in the house than the borrower requires, that the proportion which he is proposing to sub-let is a reasonable proportion, and,

secondly, that the rents proposed to be charged to the sub-tenants are reasonable rents. Unless there is some such power for a local authority to do something like that, it may well be that public funds will be used to perpetuate an element of profiteering in rents, which I think is most undesirable.
5.15 p.m.
As the Parliamentary Secretary will realise, owing to the Rent Act, the door is now wide open, and there is no control of these rents at all. Sub-tenants cannot go to any court and say "I am paying too much rent." There is no redress whatever for them. In the case of a tenancy of furnished accommodation, application can be made to the Furnished Houses Rent Tribunal, but such tenants are faced with being turned out of their accommodation at the end of three months. It is the responsibility of the local authorities, which should be given a certain amount of power to be reasonable in these matters, but also power to come down hard and strong in cases which they consider unreasonable, both from the point of view of the accommodation which the borrower is alienating and from that of the rents which are to be charged.
If the hon. Gentleman can throw any light on that aspect of this problem, I am sure that it will be of interest to the Committee, and to all others in areas where the housing problem is acute, to know exactly what the Government have in mind.

Mr. A. Evans: I wish briefly to support my hon. Friend the Member for Acton (Mr. Sparks), although his Amendment would seem to be rather drastic. He is asking us to say that when a local authority makes an advance, it should have the right to express its agreement or disagreement with the letting of any part of the house by the person who receives the advance, and that if the occupant does not comply with the requirements of the local authority about sub-letting, then the local authority should require the immediate repayment of the money advanced. That seems to be rather a drastic requirement.

Mr. Sparks: I do not think that there is any other way which would have been in order in which we could have dealt with the matter.

Mr. Evans: That may be so, and, certainly, my hon. Friend is trying to deal with a rather vexatious problem. It arises more acutely in the densely-populated urban centres, and particularly with the tenement house, which is probably the worst form of housing in the country, which can take three or four families.
The purchaser raises his money from the local authority, and proceeds to let off rooms in the house at excessive rents. Cases are known in the London area in which this has occurred, and in which a person has purchased a house and has proceeded to let off individual rooms to three or four adults in each room, thus seriously overcrowding the house. The local authority has very little power to prevent it.
The Housing Act is being flouted, and this overcrowding is taking place now. The power of the local authority to prevent this practice lies in the enforcement of the Sections of the Housing Act relating to overcrowding, but if the authority attempts to do that, and the court decides that these people must go, the local authority has to re-house them. The local authority is not in a position to re-house people, especially in the central London area.
This is an anti-social and, from a health point of view, dangerous practice, which is to be deplored, and my hon. Friend is trying to give certain power to the local authority when it advances money to purchase a house to control the letting of that house in order to prevent the spread of this harmful and dangerous practice, which causes overcrowding particularly in the centres of our cities.
My hon. Friend may not have chosen the exact words necessary to achieve his purpose, but that is merely a drafting problem which can be dealt with later. I hope the Parliamentary Secretary will be able to tell us that he is aware of the problem and that, in collaboration with my hon. Friend, he will try to insert something in the Bill to help local authorities to deal with it.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (Mr. J. R. Bevins): I gladly respond to the invitation of the hon. Member for Acton (Mr. Sparks). I am well aware that different facets of this

subject have also been raised by the hon. Member for Islington, South-West (Mr. A. Evans) on earlier occasions. I appreciate the motives of the hon. Member for Acton in raising this matter and I think that both sides of the Committee will agree that on the whole what he is aiming at is very desirable.
I have to suggest to him, however, that although his hon. Friend referred to the Amendment as rather drastic, the matter is dealt with already and the Amendment is not necessary at present. If one looks at the Housing (Financial Provisions) Act, 1958, one finds in Section 43, among other provisions which are to have effect, one set out specifically, which says:
in the event of any of the conditions subject to which the advance is made not being complied with, the balance for the time being unpaid shall become repayable on demand by the local authority…
In substance, that is what the hon. Member for Acton has been arguing. I say to him quite plainly that a large number of local authorities have included in schemes they have submitted to the Ministry a condition which prohibits subletting without their consent. As the Committee knows, a local authority scheme made under Section 43 of the Act requires the approval of my right hon. Friend. He has been perfectly willing to approve the particular condition referred to by the hon. Member on the assurance that consent to allow letting or sub-letting would not be unreasonably withheld by the local authority.
As hon. Members on both sides of the Committee will appreciate, there are circumstances in which a limited amount of letting or sub-letting may be desirable. It may be desirable on social grounds. Some other authorities which have not sought to import this condition of the Act into their lending schemes, make a practice of importing the condition into the mortgage deed. I am advised that that practice is general.
For those reasons, I say to the hon. Member and to his hon. Friend that the existing powers to cope with what quite clearly is a danger in the London area are in our view adequate. If we were to accept the Amendment we should be accepting something which in the nature of the case would be universal and highly rigid, whereas, under the present system as I have described it, there is an element of flexibility which enables local


authorities to use their judgment and discretion according to the circumstances as they exist in particular areas. For those reasons, I hope the hon. Member for Acton will not feel inclined to press the Amendment.

Mr. Sparks: The hon. Gentleman has not explained the implications of that condition. I am told that the implicacations do not involve some of the considerations I have advanced. The local authority can refuse consent or disapprove of an application for sub-letting only if that would jeopardise the security value of the money it has advanced. I understand that a local authority cannot refuse such an application on the ground that the borrower is charging an excessive rent for what he proposes to sub-let.
The local authority cannot refuse consent if it thinks the borrower is sub-letting too much of the accommodation and not retaining what the authority thinks is adequate for the family of the borrower. It can refuse only if consent would jeopardise the security of the money it has advanced. If consent were refused for any other reason, a borrower could go to the court and probably get permission from the court to do exactly what he wanted if it were not found that that would jeopardise the security of the money advanced.
The Parliamentary Secretary should put us right about that. If I am wrong, I am sure we should all be glad, because we are looking for means to provide a certain measure of control by local authorities over abuses which I am sure will arise from time to time in excessive sub-letting and excessive, unreasonable rents. If local authorities have that power under the terms of the Act referred to, we should all be pleased to hear that, but I understand that is not the case.

Mr. Bevins: Frankly, from the practical point of view I see no difference at all between the present procedure under the Housing Acts, which involves local authorities and my right hon. Friend, and what would occur if the Amendment were accepted, because the position would be identical.

Mr. Sparks: I do not wish to press the Amendment to a Division. The hon. Gentleman has not quite answered the

point I made; nevertheless, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Mr. Mitchison: I beg to move, in page 4, line 5, at the end to add:
Provided that, in relation to advances made under this section, being advances which could not have been made if this section had not been enacted, the following conditions shall be observed—

(a) no advance shall be made save to a person who occupies the house or a dwelling consisting of or comprised in the house and has in relation to the house such an interest as is mentioned in subsection (3) of section five of this Act or, as the case may be, is indicated in subsection (3) of section twenty of this Act;
(b) the house or, if the house comprises more than one dwelling, every dwelling in the house shall be already provided with the standard amenities referred to in subsection (1) of section four or, as the case may be, subsection (1) of section nineteen of this Act and shall be in such condition as not to be unfit for human habitation (so, however, that for the purposes of this paragraph a house or dwelling shall be deeemed to be already provided with the said standard amenities, if an application for a standard grant in respect of that house or dwelling has been approved under section five or, as the case may be, under section twenty of this Act);
(c) such proportion, not being less than one per cent. nor more than ten per cent., of the advance as the local authority may, either generally or in any particular case, decide, shall be treated and described by the authority as a repairs advance and a corresponding proportion of every repayment of and every payment of interest on the advance shall be paid into a repairs fund, which and the proceeds of which shall be managed by the authority and applied by them to pay for repairs of all houses in respect of which advances made by virtue of this section are from time to time outstanding in whole or in part;
(d) the person receiving the advance shall undertake, for so long as the advance is outstanding in whole or in part—

(i) that, while he or a member of his family continues to occupy the house or a dwelling comprised in the house, he will not sell, dispose of or encumber his interest in the house save to or in favour of the local authority;
(ii) that, if the house or such a dwelling as aforesaid ceases to be occupied by him or a member of his family, he will not sell the house without having first offered it to the local authority for purchase on terms and at a price stipulated by him; and
(iii) that, if within thirty days the local authority have not accepted the said offer, he will not within or after those thirty days sell the house on terms more favourable to the purchaser than those terms or at a price exceeding that price, unless the local authority consent to the sale.


5.30 p.m.
This Amendment, like the preceding one, can relate only to 100 per cent. advances made by virtue of the Clause we are considering. Unlike the previous Amendment, it is mandatory in the sense that it seeks to impose conditions on those advances and not on other advances.
What we shall get for the purposes of 100 per cent. mortgages will generally be houses for which the owner cannot manage to put up the deposit required under existing arrangements, whether those arrangements are made with local authorities or with building societies. Accordingly we have to consider what we now propose in the light of that. We shall be dealing to a considerable extent with houses belonging to people of very moderate means.
Let us take the proposals one by one. The first is that the advances should be made only to owner-occupiers. "Owner-occupier" is in this case to include a person who has the long leasehold title indicated in Clause 5 (3) of the English part of the Bill and the corresponding provision in the Scottish part.
This is not an unusual provision. If we come back to the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Acts we find that the provision is only for occupying owners. I agree that in the Housing (Financial Provisions) Act there are provisions as to the title and the duration of the mortgage which to some extent overlap this provision, but I put it forward not to stand by any particular length of leasehold interest nor indeed as a final and complete solution in place of what might well be a more complicated Clause submitted by the Government on Report after they have accepted the principle of the Amendment. I take this provision for the reason that it corresponds with the leasehold interest required for the purposes of standard grants in the later part of the Bill, and, without going into it in great detail, there is convenience in having the same extent of title in the two cases. I will give the reason for that as I proceed.
The provision in paragraph (a) is not very novel. There is nothing in the Bill as it stands to prevent advances being made to other or lesser titles—people who are not necessarily owneroccupiers—save in so far as it can be found in the Acts themselves which it is sought to amend.
We come to what is in my opinion an even more important condition. It is that when advances are being made on a house, the house should be one which has the standard amenities which are intended to be provided under the later parts of the Bill and should comply with a condition of standard grants under the Bill by being not unfit for human habitation. I would say that it does not seem to me practicable or possible as a condition necessarily to carry those matters on for the full period of the advance, although there are some other statutory provisions tending in that direction.
There is one proviso to a proviso which I should mention. It is intended that the house should qualify if the standard amenities are to be provided under the Bill quite soon after the advance is made. It is hoped that, for the smaller houses which might well be the subject of these advances, the two sets of provisions can be combined. That, I think, is the Government's intention, or so we were told on Second Reading, in relation to some of the building society advances which we have been considering. The condition which I propose would therefore allow the acceptance of an application for a standard grant to be treated as equivalent to the provision of the standard amenities. This is a mere question of timing. It would mean that a man who had made an application, and whose application had been accepted, would be able to get the advantage of the resulting standard grants in the amount to which he would be entitled under the advance.
The third condition is that a part of the advance made should be treated as earmarked for repairs. In a Bill of this kind we cannot provide for anything more than that. We are dealing with the advances, and what is to be done will have to be financed out of them. It was said by several of my hon. Friends and some hon. Members opposite on Second Reading that one of the difficulties in all these advances, be they building society or local authority advances, is that under modern conditions a man often cannot find a rented house anywhere and, as an alternative, has to buy a house and is forced to buy on terms which may sometimes be oppressive and difficult and which are highly likely to


strain all his resources. If he is to put up a deposit he may have to scrape together every penny he has and wait some time to collect the money.
That does not apply to the 100 per cent. advances, but this means that when he comes to repay that 100 per cent, advance he may, in the same way, be straining his weekly pay packet to repay it. In the nature of the case he is both paying interest and repaying the advance, and he will accordingly have to pay more under a 100 per cent. advance than he would pay as rent of a rented house, other things being equal.
That being the position, it seems to me that the risk—and it is a risk which is borne out by my own experience in my constituency and I am sure by that of many other hon. Members—is that people will commit themselves to every penny which they have in order to get a house and then will get into trouble the moment the repairs bill has to be met. These 100 per cent. advances are particularly liable to that sort of trouble because they will be made to people who cannot find the deposit and they are also more likely to be made on the smaller and older type of house than are other advances. They are therefore likely to be advances on houses which will need repairs expenditure fairly soon. If they are to be made out of the local authority funds, it is obviously right that steps should be taken to see that the property is properly preserved and that the borrower's individual difficulties—they may not amount to individual imprudence but probably will be difficulties into which he has been driven by lack of a rented house in the area—do not result in the house falling into grave disrepair.
Accordingly, we have provided in an earlier Clause that the house should be in a reasonable condition, as far as the provision about fit for human habitation does that, and we are now on the correlated question of keeping the house in reasonable condition. The provision contemplated is that a certain percentage of the advance should be treated in the first instance as made on account of repairs. That is rather a book-keeping and notional matter intended to direct the borrower's attention to what is happening. Secondly, the provision is that as his

repayments are both capital and interest repayments, a similar proportion of them should be set aside into a repairs fund.
There is another point about the repairs fund. In some cases local authorities, the larger authorities at any rate, will be making use of the possibility of 100 per cent. advances in more than one case in their areas, and it may well be in quite a number of cases in their areas. It seems, therefore, much better, if they are to do so, that they should treat the repairs question not as one with which they will have to deal house by house but as one which affects a conglomeration, if I may so call it, of the houses upon which they have made advances.
That is the way in which the local authorities would normally treat one of their housing estates, and while there is no reason to suppose that the houses on which they make these advances will all be situated in the same place, there is some possibility that that will be so in some types of area, and there is certainly no objection to the local authorities adopting the procedure I have suggested. From a financial and administrative point of view I should have thought that it was far simpler.
Accordingly, the proposal is that a percentage of these repayments and interest on the advance should be put into a repairs fund, and that repairs fund should be applied by the local authority towards keeping in repair all the houses in respect of which 100 per cent. advances have been made. I cannot but feel that that is, on the whole, the right way of doing it as a practical matter.
What it amounts to is that the man himself is contributing indirectly towards it in the amount of his advance and by a proportion of his repayments on capital and interest being handled in that way. I agree at once that it does not follow that the amount will always be sufficient. We cannot be sure of that. It does not seem right, where the whole thing depends on the difference between the 100 per cent. and the 90 per cent. advance, which is the existing one, that too much should be set aside for this purpose, excellent though it is.
The suggestion, therefore, is that the local authority should be bound to make some allocation of this sort, but the allocation should not exceed 10 per cent.,


which represents the difference between the 90 per cent. and the 100 per cent. advances taken, with a minimum of 1 per cent., which seems to me to be a reasonable minimum for this purpose. The provision, therefore, is for the allocation of such proportions between 1 per cent. and 10 per cent. as the local authority may think fit. It leaves it open to the local authority to distinguish between one house and to say that in a particular case a house is likely to need more repair expenditure and, therefore, to charge a higher proportion to the repairs on that house and to allocate it accordingly. It is elastic in that sense, and it leaves it to the local authorities to decide not only the percentage in general, if they choose to do it in that way, but a percentage in the case of each individual house.
The last provision is again one for which there is precedent in this type of advance. It is that the borrower who gets the advance should undertake to continue to occupy the house. I think that is one of the provisions in the Small Dwellings Acquisition Acts, and if we are to make advances to owner-occupiers some provision of that sort is quite reasonable. Obviously no one wants to make a man continue to occupy a house for ever. Equally one wants to allow for cases in which he dies or moves or some family arrangement results in another member of the family occupying the house. Accordingly, for the purposes of the next condition which I am coming to, broadly speaking the occupation by the member of the family is treated as the occupation of the man to whom the original advance was made.
5.45 p.m.
What happens when this man moves? We have to consider the purpose of making the advances in these older statutes applicable only to owner-occupiers. I think that the reason is quite obvious. It was felt that they were the people whose hardship, or possible hardship, required special help from the local authority, help to be given under Parliamentary powers in some Statute, and that there was no such need in the case of a landlord who would have the qualifying title, but who would not meet with the same hardship. If he were seeking to acquire a house, he would not be acquiring it for the purposes of living in it, otherwise he would be the owner-occupier, but simply

for the purpose of letting it. I do not think that anyone has ever suggested that there is anything wrong in that distinction.
Accordingly, these have tended to be owner-occupier cases. If we allow the owner-occupier to depart whenever he chooses—and one wishes not to interfere unduly on questions of this sort—then, unless we put some such provision in the Bill, the whole intention of this legislation can be avoided by a man getting an advance as an owner-occupier and later taking advantage of it by letting the house to someone and making more out of it than he had to pay to the local authority for the advance. That is an ever present danger in the present housing position in the larger towns.
After all, houses are very hard to come by. I need not dwell too long on that. Every hon. Member of the Committee knows what the position is. We know that, partly on account of the lack of accommodation in the centre of the larger towns and partly on account of the legislation of the Government, there is a real shortage of housing accommodation. People submit to the most harsh and unreasonable conditions, if they are able to be imposed and if they cannot get houses in any other way. That is the present position. While I would not expect the right hon. Gentleman for one moment to agree with my statement of it, since it is something for which he himself was largely responsible, I would expect him to agree that there are cases in the larger towns at present where people are driven to make bargains unfair to themselves in respect of houses, and, consequently, cases in which landlords can profiteer in letting in one way or another.
It seems to us on this side of the Committee that there is only one way to deal with the matter. These are houses upon which local authorities have originally made 100 per cent. advances. They may, in the first instance, have paid for them. If such a house is to be vacated by an owner-occupier or a member of his family, it is only right and reasonable that the local authority should have the first call upon it.
Accordingly, paragraph (d) of the Amendment provides, in the first place, that the man who has had the advance,


if he is still in occupation of the house, cannot sell, dispose of it or mortgage it to someone else. That is an obvious necessity. He would thereupon cease to be the owner-occupier. Again, there are provisions of that sort in the statutes which we are considering. He must give the first offer to the local authority if he or a member of his family no longer occupies the house.
As a corollary to that, having given the local authority a reasonable time to accept an offer and the local authority not having done so—we are leaving it entirely to him as to the price he asks—he shall not thereafter sell it at a lower price to someone else. That, I think, would discourage him from asking an altogether excessive price from the local authority because in those circumstances he might find it difficult to dispose of that house to anyone else.
This is not a very stringent provision. It calls for a first offer to the local authority. It leaves it to the man in question to stipulate his price and conditions, and if the local authority does not take advantage of the offer all he has to do is not to offer a lower price or better conditions to anyone else.
I recognise at once that in many respects these provisions are very similar to those already appearing in legislation dealing with 90 per cent. advances. That legislation was originally meant for advances of a smaller percentage, but here it is intended only to deal with 100 per cent. advances, and we have adapted our provisions as best we can to that sort of case. It is not, of course, a coincidence that they happen to tally exactly with the proposals made by my party in relation to 100 per cent. advances in the excellent book "Homes of the Future". At least, they tally as far as we can achieve it within the terms of the Act, and, in case he has forgotten them, I might perhaps, call the right hon. Gentleman's attention to the proposals in that book. They are:
In order to qualify for a 100 per cent. advance, the purchaser would have to do three things…. Agree to modernise the house so as to provide, where practicable, a fixed bath or shower with hot and cold water, and means for the disposal of waste water.
The first of those is one of the standard amenities, while the second is included

among those matters that have to be taken into account when ascertaining the conditions that make a house fit for human habitation.
Secondly, there must be adequate heating and lighting. That, again, comes within the matters to be regarded within the statutory definition of fitness or unfitness for human habitation. Thirdly, there must be
Self-containment of any separate household units.
That means that there should be the necessary facilities for living in that unit in just the same way as if the unit were the whole house. That is provided for in the Amendment by making the conditions apply not only to the house but to a dwelling in the house.
Next, the purchaser must agree to contribute to a repairs fund. We could not put that in that form in this present Measure, but I think there is a great deal to be said for the contribution being made as I described earlier—by allocation of part of the repayment of and interest on the advance.
Next, he must
Agree to remain in personal occupation and to give the local authority first opportunity of purchasing the house, at a price to be fixed by the District Valuer, if he or she wishes to resell.
We want to carry with us the Government on this Amendment. It so closely resembles earlier legislation that we feel sure that they will see the complete reasonableness of what we put forward. However, we felt that if we referred to the district valuer's price we might have a little more difficulty in carrying the Government with us. Indeed, the purpose of that condition is really met by the provision that I have just indicated, because all that is really required is that these advances should not be used to enable a man to get a higher price afterwards by reason of the advance or to let at a higher figure by reason of the advance.
I do not attach very great importance to the distinction, but if the Government do not like the Amendment in its present form we can always seek to bring in the district valuer on Report, if it is thought that it imports any grave matter of principle, although I do not think that it


does. Substantially, the Amendment follows, on the one hand, two pieces of previous legislation in almost every respect—not exactly in this form, but directed to the same point in relation to 90 per cent. advances—and, on the other hand, the excellent proposals put forward in "Homes of the Future", to which I have just referred.
If I may say so, it shows how sensible those proposals are that it should be possible to say, and to substantiate saying it, that they are very similar in many respects to what has already been provided. I do not think that they contain anything at all revolutionary. If there is anything revolutionary, it is the repairs fund. Those of us who are concerned with the social effect of advances of this sort and with the living conditions that people have to accept because of housing troubles will feel that a more sensible arrangement for pooling repairs under the auspices of the local authority is only in conformity with modern conditions and modern requirements.

Mr. F. Harris: I have listened very carefully to what has been said by the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison). I am deeply interested in this subject, and I am very anxious to ensure that those wishing to take advantage of these 100 per cent. advances from the local authority—and we all want to see that come about—shall not in any way be hampered too much when they want to become the real owner-occupiers of their houses.
The hon. and learned Gentleman said that there should be a stipulation that advances should not be made by the local authority to anyone except an owner-occupier. I cannot imagine that a local authority would consider making them to anyone else—and I shall refer later to what may happen after the man has been the owner-occupier for some time.
The hon. and learned Gentleman's second stipulation was that the advance should not be made by the local authority if the house was at all unfit for human habitation. I do not think that any local authority would be lax in that respect. We must trust local authorities in this matter. No local authority, knowing its responsibilities, would make any advance unless it was well satisfied that the house satisfied in all respects the standards in the mind of the hon. and learned Gentleman.
I found the hon. and learned Gentleman's third point extremely confusing. He suggested that between 1 per cent. and 10 per cent. of the advance should be held back by the local authority, or be put in a pool to meet the cost of subsequent repairs—

Mr. Mitchison: I quite agree that it might have been put more clearly in the Amendment, but I said that I regarded it, in the first instance, as a purely bookkeeping arrangement. The local authority would just say to the man, "We shall call X per cent. of your advance a repairs advance." It would make no difference to the man getting the advance but, when he repaid it, 4 per cent. of the principal and of the interest would be put into the reserve fund. And he would know that a contribution was being made in respect of repairs.

Mr. Harris: I appreciate the point, but I think that the hon. and learned Gentleman will agree that this can lead to considerable confusion. When a man takes over a house he becomes the proud owner of it, and makes himself responsible for keeping it in good repair. That is the way I would like him to look upon it if he were a 100 per cent. owner of the property.
6.0 p.m.
Anything which might savour of, or tend to convey, the idea that the local authority, in some form or other, would provide money for such repairs would greatly confuse matters. There would have to be some limitation, for instance, if the repairs went on and this pool was available for a year or two, and, then, after that time, a man found that he would have to find the money for the repairs himself. I confess that this particular point which the hon. and learned Gentleman advanced seems extremely confusing.
I regard the final suggestion that the hon. and learned Gentleman made as rather hard on the person who wants to take advantage of the 100 per cent. advance from a local authority to buy his own home. I do not think we should tie his hands any more than we possibly need in our desire to feel that the Government's plan is being well and properly carried out. Whether the man or the local authority still owns the house, he will feel himself to be the true owner,


and ultimately, when he becomes the owner, much will depend upon the way he look upon it in his actual possession of the house.
My hope will be that he would look upon it—I would certainly take this view in Croydon—as a proud owner, and he would want, wherever he could, to make adjustments and alterations inside it, as the proud owner usually does in his own property. Any stipulation that he could not, a few years later, fairly comfortably resell it because he had done well with it but he must instead offer it back to the local authority or, at any rate, offer it at a certain stipulated price, would tend rather to discourage him from doing what most of us wish any man to do in his own home.

Mr. Mitchison: The hon. Gentleman is paying such careful attention to all that I said that I am sure he would not mind my correcting him on one point. I pointed out that this Amendment differed from the policy pamphlet in one respect, and that I had deliberately left the price and the conditions of the offer to the local authority to the man who was then occupying. He could do what he liked, and I suggested that it would be a sufficient check on him if he could not take a better price or impose better conditions afterwards when selling to anyone else. He would find himself landed with an unsaleable house if he asked an excessive amount of the local authority or he sought to impose unreasonable conditions.

Mr. Harris: There is, I think, a genuine difference of view here in our approach to this matter. For instance, the hon. and learned Gentleman made references to the district valuer. I myself am not much in favour of district valuers.

Mr. Mitchison: I am sorry to take up the hon. Gentleman's time, but I did point out that I had not put that in the Amendment and I explained why. It does not strike me as a matter of great importance, but I did not put it in because I knew that a great many hon. Members would react to the words "district valuer" rather in the way that some people react as soon as they hear the words "atomic bomb".

Mr. Harris: I am obliged to the hon. and learned Gentleman for reaffirming

that point. My whole purpose is to say that I strongly feel that, when a man is put in the position of receiving a 100 per cent. advance from a local authority to buy his own home, he should, as far as humanly possible, be left unfettered. He should feel that it is his house and that he can get on with the job of improving it as best he may. There should not be too many conditions attached.
If I were the type of man—admittedly, perhaps, someone not having very much money—who might come along to a local authority and ask for the 100 per cent. advance, and then I found myself up against all these stipulations as soon as I was asked to take it on, I should feel that I did not wish to take advantage of whatever offer was available from the local authority. That is the point I am trying to make. I want such people to be encouraged. That is the purpose behind what the Government are trying to do, not to frighten them off doing what we really wish them to do.

Mr. James MacColl: As a result of the drafting skill of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison), we are able, on this Amendment, to discuss a number of the very important implications of the policy to provide for 100 per cent. advances towards home ownership. I wish to address myself to one of those conditions, namely, the one dealing with repairs, the one which the hon. Gentleman the Member for Croydon, North-West (Mr. F. Harris) found a little confusing. I hope that I shall be able to help him a little.
I begin from the point where he left off. We are anxious that home ownership should be a success. I suggest that it would not be a success if the result were that people found themselves under a burden of financial obligation far too great for their limited resources. If home ownership becomes a sort of "Sinbad of the sea", so that a man will have his house hanging over him, as it were, as a burden instead of a thing of joy in which he can put his creative zeal, to which the hon. Gentleman referred, a burden he just cannot cope with and which grows worse and worse, the whole idea of home ownership will fall into disrepute. There will be a feeling that, from the point of view of the community as a whole it will not lead to the care and attention being devoted to houses


which we want, but it will create a tragic situation for many humble people with limited resources.
Two things are, I think, beyond argument. First, the whole idea of this proposal for 100 per cent. advances is to bring into home ownership people who, in ordinary commercial conditions—a phrase bandied about in discussing the work of the building societies—would not undertake home ownership at all. They would not have the means and facilities to do so. Broadly, they would be people who would not have the experience to do it because they would be those who had not been accustomed to the responsibilities.
Secondly, a house is a wasting asset. That is something which it is most difficult for many people to remember. One becomes accustomed to thinking of a house as something permanent, a fixed part of one's life. I confess that I fall into the habit myself sometimes of thinking that a house is something which goes on and on and will continue to do so. That, of course, is not true. A house is an asset like a motor car and, like any other asset, it wastes away with time. Unless money is spent on it, and it is kept in repair, it will slowly become more and more obsolescent and unfit for habitation.
It is, therefore, of tremendous importance that people who undertake the obligations of home ownership should realise that it is not just a matter of paying so much down and signing a chit with a building society, thereafter feeling that for ever and ever it will just go on and they can think to themselves, "We are not like tenants. We need have no worries about insecurity of tenure. We have a roof over our heads". Houses, like men, grow older and they require more and more expenditure on them as they get older. I regard those two points as common ground between us all, and they are reinforced in this particular case by the avowed intention of the Government to extend home ownership to older houses.
All those conditions which apply to any house apply particularly, of course, to houses which are over forty years old. By the time they come into the possession of the new owner they will be old houses which, in many cases—and, again, I think

that this is common ground—have been neglected in the past and have not been kept in proper repair. Therefore, the important thing is that if home ownership is to be a success there should be a regular and steady building up of reserves against the day when repairs have to be done.
I have held these views for quite a long time. They are not novel. The idea of having a repair fund for houses is common enough in most countries where home ownership is widespread. It is certainly common enough in Scandinavia. There is nothing new about it. I am fortified to find that in the special bulletin of the Building Societies Association, dealing with the implications of this Bill, which I quoted yesterday and which was published in November, 1958, this statement appears:
It is obviously in the interests of both the borrower and of the building society that houses which are more than 40 years old should be maintained in a good state of decoration and repair and borrowers under the scheme will be encouraged to save regularly with their building society so as to create a fund for this purpose.
There we have building societies looking at the matter purely from the point of view of their own commercial interests and in order to safeguard their own security, realising the importance of encouraging home owners to save into a repairs fund. I know that we are not discussing that point at the moment for a variety of reasons, some of them involving points of order. What we are discussing is the extra grant paid by the local authority towards the houses and not the building societies share.
However, the need is reinforced where a grant is proposed, because it brings into the scheme people who have, by definition, no resources behind them. If people have financial resources behind them they probably would not find it difficult to meet the 10 per cent. of the cost of the house which should be deposited. We are dealing with people who, by definition, have very limited resources and the kind of people who will be severely hit by any sudden and unexpected expenditure needed on the house simply because they have not the resources behind them.
Some people who have criticised the proposal have said that it is bad because it will mean that it will prevent poor


people becoming owner-occupiers, whereas more prosperous people can afford to pay an extra amount and become owner-occupiers. One might almost say that that is an irresponsible political agitation. The result would be, if one took it seriously, that all sorts of people would find themselves crippled by having to meet expenditure which they did not expect.
I therefore suggest that there is not much doubt that some kind of reserve against repairs needs to be built up. As I have said, building societies, from their commercial approach, recognise that and it is, therefore, all the more important that we and local authorities, from the point of view of preserving the house as an asset and to make home ownership workable, should be all the more desirous of bringing it about.
The next argument which has to be met is that these proposals in the bulletin are voluntary. The questions may be asked: would it be right to make them compulsory and why should not we leave it to voluntary arrangement? That kind of argument is continually advanced and it is very difficult to draw a clear line of demarcation. This question has arisen for years in all discussions on compulsory insurance. It arose when National Insurance first began, when it was said that the prudent man would save up against sickness and that it was wicked to make the purchase of insurance stamps compulsory. I am old enough to remember the fury which was caused when, for the first time, ladies were compelled to insure their domestic servants.
The same kind of argument in a quite different context can be put forward about compulsory third party insurance for motorists. It has been said: why not leave it to the prudent man to safeguard himself by making arrangements for insurance? The real point is that people are liable to be too optimistic and take risks, and it is in the general interest that a repairs fund should, to some extent, be made compulsory.
Therefore, it ought to be part of all these transactions that a small amount—in the nature of things it cannot be a large amount—should be paid into a repairs fund, so that if at the end of five, ten or fifteen years the roof is suddenly blown off, or a burst pipe leads to terrific damage from water, there is some

money behind the owner-occupier upon which he can draw to meet that disaster.
6.15 p.m.
My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kettering remarkable, though he is, cannot put everything into an Amendment. He cannot write a book on the subject and incorporate it in an Amendment. But I should like to see a sort of no-claims bonus attached to the repairs fund so that it would be an incentive to the home owner to do the work himself and to leave the fund alive for future use. In other words, as the hon. Member for Croydon, North-West fairly said, we do not want a home owner to feel that there is money in the "kitty" and, therefore, he need not do repairs himself. An incentive must be given to the home owner to do the work himself so that the money in the fund will accumulate and that when major repairs are necessary money is available out of which the repairs can be carried out.
This matter is very much on all fours with the kind of problem that arises in the Health Service. We know that in America one of the greatest worries for the middle class is that when they become ill they have to pay out crippling sums of money to get better. They are, therefore, encouraged to have voluntary systems of insurance. We in this country say, "No. We recognise that that is a common risk which people have to face and it is a thing which can be best met by compulsory insurance."
I would apply the same analogy here. If one is a home owner one must recognise that, sooner or later, money must be spent on repairs. I suppose that at one time or another we have all kept our fingers crossed and said, "I hope that the damp will not come through next year", or, "We can go another year without putting a lot of new slates on the roof", and then we have bad weather and our improvidence catches up with us. I am sure that nearly all of us who have the joys of owner occupation have had that experience.
It is reasonable to say that the time has now come when that kind of risk is something which should be saved against. I therefore warmly support the part of the Amendment which deals with a repairs fund.

Mr. Mitchison: May I say to my hon. Friend that the fund is to be managed


by the local authority. That is a fairly wide term, and management of housing estates justifies arrangements about rent rebates, and so on. It is quite possible that that might cover the sort of arrangement my hon. Friend has in mind, but it may be that special provision ought to be made for it.

Mr. MacColl: I do not need to say to my hon. and learned Friend that I was not even breathing, whispering or thinking criticism of the comprehensiveness of his Amendment. He is a master draftsman whom we all admire. I was merely drawing out of it certain implications which might not have been immediately clear to somebody who read it quickly.

Mr. William Ross: I should like also to express my appreciation of the draftsmanship of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison), and to say that it is exceeded only by the clarity and care of his exposition of his Amendment. I had almost given up hope, after what I had experienced over the past few days in another part of this building, of being able to understand any Amendment of any length at all, and I was terrified when I saw that this Amendment extended to 36 lines. But my hon. and learned Friend took us through it section by section and satisfied us that not only did he know what it meant, but that he could explain it to our satisfaction, so much so that he has almost convinced me.
I wish to say right away that I am not one of those who are greatly enamoured with proposals for assisting people to buy old houses. The conditions may be different in England or in Wales. We have had some saddening experience—and I am sure the hon. Gentleman the Joint under-Secretary of State for Scotland would be the first to agree with me—of people in Scotland who, by the compelling circumstances of housing shortage, have been forced to buy old houses; and what a mess they have got themselves into.
If we are to encourage the spread of house ownership in relation to older houses, we must have stipulations. I want to plead with the hon. Gentleman that what my hon. and learned Friend has proposed is the absolute minimum, if we have to have a proposal that is at once

practical, prudent and reasonable from the point of view, not only of the house purchaser, but of the local authority, too. He mentioned, and I agree with him, that the first section of the Amendment deals with the fact that it is for owner-occupiers only. That is a matter of obvious draftsmanship that simply had to be included.
When my hon. and learned Friend spoke about the second provision, which related to the standard and quality of the house and whether it was fit for human habitation, I should agree with him if that is all that was there. I probably would have been satisfied if that is all that had been there, but specific reference is made to the need to have the standard amenities that are laid down in relation to the improvement provisions to which we come later. In other words, it is not just to be a house that is fit for human habitation. If it were that case, it would not have my support and I hope that no local authority would be satisfied with it. If people are to buy houses, we want them to buy something that is worth while, something in which there is a reasonable measure of human comfort. I certainly would not be agreeable to a local authority putting forward 100 per cent. grants to allow people to buy substandard houses.
I plead with the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland. He knows that the danger is there. How many sub-standard houses are there? There are about 120,000 of them. They are houses which, with every year that passes, are coming nearer and nearer to the state of being slums. I ask the hon. Gentleman to think of this in a United Kingdom context and to say that we cannot do without these stipulations that are in proviso (b).
I wish to put forward the suggestion that we have to be even more careful. These houses that may well be bought in Scotland will be houses that are part of a block of property. It is no good one of these houses being worth buying if 10 of them in the same block are slums, because when, eventually, judgment is passed on the property it will not be passed in relation to the one house but in relation to the 10 that are slums and the whole lot will come down. So it may well be that the local authority will need to be even more careful in relation to the surrounding houses.
I could not agree more with the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Widnes (Mr. MacColl) on the question of the repairs fund. This is where we have so often seen home ownership breaking down, with people scraping up everything they have to buy a house, not for the pride of being the owner-occupier, but out of the desperate need to have a house. Having spent everything, they suddenly come across something that they had overlooked, an unexpected need or liability that they did not even know existed in respect of the house they bought, particularly if they buy one which is part of a very much larger property.
I agree with my hon. Friend right away that when people become owner-occupiers they are proud of their houses. I am proud of mine, but there is a limit to what I can do with it. Sometimes my wife does not seem to appreciate that. There are certain jobs that the owner-occupier just cannot do for himself. Remembering that we are dealing with older houses, if the job is not done, the standard of the property, which was probably not very good at the start, anyway, will be considerably reduced. We must keep in mind the maintenance of the standard of the property, which we want to see improved.
I welcome very much the suggestion that we should have a repairs fund. Anyone who thinks about the matter will appreciate that this is just the kind of thing which will happen. Anyone who has ever bought a second-hand motor car knows exactly what happens after a week or after a month, when one suddenly discovers unexpectedly that it requires a tyre. So it goes on. To meet the unexpected in relation to the repairs to the house, it is essential that we should make this insurance by way of the repairs fund.
There is only one aspect that I wish to question. I do not know whether my hon. and learned Friend hopes to speak again. It concerns the variation of the amount that is to be put aside in respect of different houses. My hon. and learned Friend said that it should vary from 1 per cent. to 9 per cent., perhaps 1 per cent. in one case and 9 per cent. in another. Then, my hon. and learned Friend spoke not only about a fund, but about pooling. Is it my hon. and learned

Friend's suggestion that there should be a general pool, or is there to be a fund in respect of each house?

Mr. Mitchison: The intention was that there should be a general pool in respect of all the houses where there had been a 100 per cent, advance.

Mr. Ross: That is a very good idea, because it may well be that the unexpected will happen and something will crop up which the actual individual contribution or imagined assumed contribution in relation to the house will not meet. I am very glad that my hon. and learned Friend has cleared up that point.
6.30 P.m
The hon. Gentleman the Member for Croydon, North-West (Mr. F. Harris) said that all these stipulations would put a person off. We have to be fair to the Committee. If we did not make these three stipulations it would be possible for a person then to become not the owner-occupier, but the owner able to let the house, and probably to let the house at an uncontrolled rent, and make a profit out of what had been done by the local authority. We do not want that, and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman does not want that. Therefore, I think that the stipulations whereby the local authority should have the first option on the house is justified. After all, it is the local authority which has provided the 100 per cent. advance and it is the local authority which has either done the repairs or provided the money for the repairs.
I say to my hon. and learned Friend that I have always been suspicious of encouraging people to buy these older houses, and I have been particularly suspicious of that in Scotland. I put it to the Government, and particularly to the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, that we shall obviously have a certain amount of this encouragement, and that provisions such as these in the Amendment are the minimum which would be demanded by hon. Members, certainly on this side of the Committee, representing Scotland if they were to go forward with this extension of ownership of house property without having considerable doubts.

Mr. Bevins: I think I can quite safely say that the one thing which both sides of the Committee are agreed upon is the


desirability that houses, whether they be owner-occupied or rented, should he properly maintained. As hon. Gentlemen know, the Government have had something to do with that part of the problem during the last year.
Considering the research which the hon. Member for Widnes (Mr. MacColl) has made into this subject and his writings upon it, which I have had the opportunity of reading during the last few years, I thought his intervention today was almost uncharacteristically modest. He allowed himself only one exaggeration, I thought, when he was on the compulsion argument and when he referred to the universal acceptance of the idea of third-party insurance. That is perfectly true, but it happens that third-party insurance in the context in which he was speaking of it is compulsory in this country because the liability is unlimited. That is hardly so, to put it mildly, in house repairs and maintenance.
The hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) referred eulogistically to the drafting of this Amendment by the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison). I concede to him that it is a feat of drafting, but even so there are one or two things I shall venture to say about it in a moment.
As for the hon. Gentleman's apprehensions that local authorities or perhaps building societies may freely engage in a policy of advancing money, whether public money or private money, for the purchase of old houses of the sort he described—he described some in Scotland—I think I can reassure him that local authorities and building societies are just as hostile to the advancing of money on unfit properties as the hon. Gentleman himself. I do not think he need have many fears on that score.

Mr. Ross: The hon. Gentleman will not wish to misrepresent me. I am not concerned with unfit houses. I do not think any local authority would advance money for them. I am concerned with sub-standard houses which are not unfit.

Mr. Bevins: I think we perfectly well understand each other in this discussion.
I turn to the detail of the Amendment. The intention of the Amendment, as the hon. and learned Gentleman made quite clear, is to impose certain conditions

when 100 per cent. advances are made by local authorities, and the Amendment includes three or four conditions all of which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, North-West (Mr. F. Harris) said, are, by their nature, restrictive in their impact on house purchase. I agreed entirely with him when he said that to the extent that these conditions are restrictive they must in practice prove a discouragement to house purchase arrangements as between the citizen and the local authority.
I want to say a word or two about the four parts of the Amendment, first of all about paragraph (a) which, as the hon. and learned Gentleman said, has the effect of restricting advances to owner-occupiers who hold the freehold interest or a lease of at least fifteen years. I agree, of course, that the vast majority of advances under these provisions will, as in the past, be to owner-occupiers, but, of course, there is no reason in either logic or equity why these advances should be limited to owner-occupiers if the local authority considers that the security is sound. If anyone wants to buy a house, whether it be for owner-occupation or for letting to a third party, I think he should be free to do so under these arrangements, as, indeed, he is at present under our housing legislation.
I perfectly well understand, of course, why from his point of view the hon. and learned Gentleman takes a different line. He takes a different line because, although he says—and I believe him—that the party opposite now, in its reformed mood, supports a policy of home ownership, it is not particularly enamoured—I am being perfectly fair about this—of any extension of private ownership of rented houses.
Paragraph (b) requires that every house on which a 100 per cent. advance is made shall actually possess the standard amenities, or, failing that, shall have a standard grant, approved for the purpose of providing those amenities. Here, I am bound to say, there has been a little deviationism from the party pamphlet, "Homes of the Future". I think the hon. and learned Gentleman will agree that what the Opposition stated in that statement of policy was that the man who bought a house on a full mortgage would have to undertake to bring it up to date by providing amenities similar to the


standard amenities. I think I am probably right when I say that this part of the Amendment is aimed at implementing that declaration of policy.
I think hon. Gentlemen opposite will see that it goes beyond that, and the view of my right hon. Friend is that it should be left to the individual to decide when he will install the standard amenities if they do not already exist. Of course, in the overwhelming majority of cases they will exist.
Now a word on the pre-emption provided for in paragraph (d). This paragraph is a particularly important one and it would have a most restrictive effect on people contemplating seeking a mortgage from a local authority. As I have understood, what the party opposite have always said is that a man who has the advantage of a 100 per cent. mortgage would be required to give the local authority the first opportunity of buying his house if he wished to sell. The position here, of course, is that the purchaser is paying the market price for his home. There is no question of his purchasing a property below the market value. Why then compel him to give the local authorities a right to pre-emption? I do not begin to understand the reasoning behind that argument, but I do not believe for one moment that the machinery embodied in the Amendment for this purpose would work at all.
The Amendment says that the owner-occupier would be required to offer the house to the local authority at a price stipulated by him, that is the mortgagor. The Amendment then goes on to limit the owner-occupier to selling the house to any purchaser at the same figure. I think that the hon. and learned Member for Kettering will agree that that is what the Amendment says. If that is the case, then quite clearly the owner-occupier will feel obliged to keep the price offer to the local authority at a low level, because if he puts on too high a figure he will be in danger, first of all, of the local authority rejecting his offer and then of finding himself absolutely bound to offer the house to a third party at the same figure. One is bound to accept the fact that that is really a form of price control on the owner-occupier who buys his house on mortgage from the local authority, and I do not think that it is fair.
Let us come to the heart of the matter—the repairs fund. I have understood for a long time, as indeed has my right hon. Friend, that it has been the avowed intention of the party opposite to insist that people who purchase a house through a local authority, particularly those who do so on 100 per cent. mortgage, should contribute to a fund designed to cover the cost of external decorations and structural repairs. I believe that has been the intention for a long time past, but the Amendment seems to go a good deal further than that.
I have listened very carefully to the speech of the hon. and learned Member for Kettering and to the construction put on it by one of my hon. Friends. Rather to my astonishment, the hon. and learned Member spoke as though he thought that this paragraph dealing with the repairs fund was to be interpreted literally. One normally does that, of course, but I had assumed, in my innocence, that what the hon. and learned Member was seeking to do was to say to the person who borrowed money from a local authority for the purchase of a house, "Yes, you will pay your normal repayments of capital and interest and you will, in addition, pay a repairs contribution." Now, to my surprise, the hon. and learned Member confirms what he said earlier, that is to say, that out of repayments to the local authorities a certain proportion not exceeding 10 per cent. would be earmarked to a repairs fund.

Mr. Mitchison: I may be wrong, but I take the view that to provide anything else would be out of order in the Bill. This is simply a Bill allowing local authorities to increase the advances which they make. One could obviously have put conditions on that increase, to oblige people to pay into a repairs fund, but, quite apart from the merits or demerits of the matter, that would have imposed financial results not contemplated by the Bill. That is my view.

Mr. Bevins: I am much obliged to the hon. and learned Member. I do not wish to harp on this point, but I should not like it to go out from the Committee, from a responsible political party, that it would ever be conceivable for a local authority to create a repairs fund out of the normal repayments made on a mortgage. If that were the case it would never be possible for a local authority


to redeem its own indebtedness. Quite clearly, the local authority scheme would soon become insolvent.
6.45 p.m.
I come now to the objections on principle to repairs contributions and to a repairs fund as I see them. It has been made perfectly clear that the repairs contributions are to find their way into a common pool which would be entirely under the control of the local authority, and the local authority would decide how and when the money would be spent. The house purchaser, although he would be compelled to contribute, would have no direct say in the maintenance and repair of his own house. That is a conception which I personally cannot accept, and I do not believe that it would be acceptable to anything more than a very small residue of owner-occupiers.
We have also to be realistic and balanced about this kind of thing. Here we are dealing with a considerable number of local authorities, all of whom inquire about the financial status of the prospective borrower and do not normally lend unless they are satisfied that the whole business of house ownership is within the capacity of the borrower.
It may or may not have been overlooked, but it is the fact that, in any case, local authorities have power under Section 44 of the Housing Act, 1958, to accept deposits from mortgagors for the purpose of repairs and to pay interest on those moneys to the depositors. That, of course, does not envisage the idea of a pool, but of deposits paid in and drawn out by individuals as and when they require them for repairs. As far as I have been able to judge, this provision has not been very widely used by councils. One can only assume that there might well have been a feeling that the administrative work would not justify the additional results which the system would bring about.
On the matter of compulsion, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Widnes, I certainly ask myself the question why mortgagors who borrow money from a local authority should be compelled to make contributions to a repairs fund. In theory, there may be something to be said for a purchaser having to set aside money for repairs, in the same sense that P.A.Y.E. deductions are an advan-

tage to the Inland Revenue. But hon. Members on both sides of the Committee who know their way about the country understand that the overwhelming majority of people who embark upon house purchase are responsible people who are quite capable of looking after their own affairs and of taking a pride in the property which they are in the process of owning. They are not crying out to be mollycoddled.
It is all very well to talk about the great need for some special provision of this sort, but I have never come across any demand from any section of the public for a repairs fund of this kind. Without a fund, a man can please himself whether he has the exterior of his house repainted in May or in September. He can plan repairs to suit the circumstances of his domestic budget, and domestic budgets, of course, vary very widely.
Two hon. Gentlemen opposite were at pains to emphasise the desirability of creating a fund of this kind, chiefly because we are now entering into the realm of 100 per cent. mortgages. It was rather suggested that local authorities would now be advancing moneys to people who were relatively impecunious. I do not accept that for one moment. The fact is that most houses bought on mortgage today are bought either by newly wedded couples or else by relatively young families. I know of people who would rush at the attraction of a 100 per cent. house mortgage because they want to pay cash down for furniture and fittings. Equally I know of other people who would prefer to buy furniture and fittings on hire purchase and to accept a lower mortgage. One cannot draw any definite conclusion from that.
In the world in which we live today people who may have limited means find available to them a number of facilities to help them in maintaining their own homes, which I recognise is not always easy. Indeed, there are literally thousands of reputable building contractors today who, week after week, are advertising repairs and maintenance for owner-occupiers on a two-year basis at a nominal rate of interest. Indeed, quite a number of the banks are prepared to finance work of that kind.
I return to the point I made earlier, that whatever may have been said in our


debate so far this afternoon, local authorities have the opportunity under existing legislation to accept deposits from mortgagors for this purpose. The fact that these facilities have not been widely taken up by local authorities is, in our belief, evidence of the fact that there is not a great deal of demand for them.

Mr. Mitchison: The hon. Gentleman has accepted some part of this Amendment and objected to other parts. I want to call his attention to one or two things, in particular to the oldest piece of legislation on this matter, the Small Dwellings Acquisition Act, 1899, which is still in force and still used. That Act provides in terms that the advances shall only be made to owner-occupiers, and as regards the advances to leaseholders the provision is somewhat more stringent than is contemplated in this Amendment. The conditions imposed there affecting a house purchased by means of an advance are that the proprietor of the house shall reside in it. Not only that, but in the matter of compulsion
The house shall be kept insured against fire to the satisfaction of the local authority, and the receipts for the premiums produced when required by them:
Moreover,
The house shall be kept in good sanitary condition and good repair:
The house shall not be used for the sale of intoxicating liquors, or in such a manner as to be a nuisance to adjacent houses:
The local authority shall have power to enter the house by any person, authorised by them in writing for the purpose, at all reasonable times for the purpose of ascertaining whether the statutory conditions are complied with.
Goodness knows, the right hon. Gentleman and his right hon. Friends have messed about with quite a lot of housing legislation, but they have not touched that Act and its conditions are still imposed. To complain that what I am seeking to impose by way of conditions here is oppressive seems to me, in those circumstances, ridiculous. It is fantastic that when this Act has not been repealed and has been in use under successive Tory Governments, and was brought in originally by a Government which at that date certainly was not a Labour Government, there should be complaints now.

Mr. Ede: It must have been very Tory.

Mr. Mitchison: Yes, in 1899 it probably was a Tory Government. This only shows how much farther back the Tory Party has succeeded in getting in the interval between 1899 and 1959—sixty years advance backwards. So I really think that those complaints today are a little off the mark.
Let us turn from that to the practical side of the matter and get one thing clear first. These 100 per cent. advances are coming along by the side of existing legislation for 90 per cent. advances and in the same Bill as an extension of the building societies' power and willingness to make similar 90 per cent. or 95 per cent. advances. These are brought in for a purpose, and the purpose is to provide for people who cannot put down the full deposit. The right hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friend know perfectly well that there are many such people about, that they are quite vocal about it, and that if nothing is done it will be one additional reason why they will not vote for the Tory Party at the next General Election.
This Bill is really a rather minor vote-catching Measure that is intended to appear attractive to the various people concerned in owning their own house in one way or another. It is for that class of person and for the type of house that such a person will get. I do not say that every person who takes advantage of the Measure would be unable to find the deposit, but that is the reason for it. The majority of them will be such people and the majority of the houses concerned will be rather old ones, or out of repair, or both.
Therefore, it is necessary to have a repairs provision in the Bill, and the only thing that worries me is that I have been more moderate than existing legislation by not providing definitely an obligation to keep the house in repair. What I have done is to try to help the man who needs help, particularly in cases of this kind, by providing for a repairs Clause.
The hon. Gentleman is right in one respect. He made it sound rather gloomy when he said that the resulting municipal scheme will be insolvent. So it will. It involves in the long run a contribution from the rates, for this reason, that the repairs fund will not go merely towards repayment, it will go towards preserving the security of the mortgage on the house.


After all, is not that a reasonable thing to do? The Government will be lending money for a long term of years on property which, as my hon. Friends pointed out, is bound to be a wasting asset. It is property which, in view of the terms of the Bill, is likely not to be particularly good property of its kind and the money will be lent to persons who are—I will not say that they are going to be bankrupt, but who are not going to be well off. It is reasonable prudence, if that is being done, to take sonic steps other than saying that it is the personal responsibility of the borrower to preserve the security upon which the money is being lent.

Mr. Bevins: This is a most important point. Do I understand the hon. and learned Gentleman to be saying that if a person secures a 100 per cent. mortgage from a local authority he sees no objection to that financial arrangement being subsidised by the ratepayer, but that if the mortgage is for only 90 per cent. then he would not regard it as right that the financial arrangement should be subsidised?

7.0 p.m.

Mr. Mitchison: The hon. Gentleman keeps forgetting that what we are doing now is seeking to amend a Clause providing for 100 per cent. mortgages. There is such a thing as control of finance and Money Resolutions by the Government of the day. This is all that I can do here. The case of the 100 per cent. borrower seems to me to be different from that of the 90 per cent. borrower. The pamphlet which I have just been reading recognises that. How far I am in order in saying this I do not know. The hon. Gentleman's question was out of order if my answer is.
My reply to the hon. Gentleman is that I am willing to recognise that the taxpayer and the ratepayer between them are making a good bargain by keeping firm the security upon which the advance is made and keeping under repair the houses of the country. I regard it as an extremely narrow-minded point of view to suppose that a contribution for the two purposes that I have indicated is a mistake. I should have thought that view was inconsistent with the purport of a mass of housing legislation where assistance has been given towards buying and maintaining houses on terms which could

not possibly he profitable. It does not frighten me in the least. I think it is thoroughly good.
Let me now turn to the succession provisions. I am the first to admit that someone may be able to think of a better way of doing it, but it does not seem to me to be very difficult or complicated. The Small Dwellings Acquisition Act provides not only that the man must offer the dwelling to the local authority, but that he must stay there for three years. I do not know what would happen if he wanted to leave. I imagine he would get permission. I cannot regard the proposition that the first offer must be made to the local authority as at all unreasonable when it is the local authority which by means of a 100 per cent. advance has paid for the house in the first place. I call it perfectly reasonable.
It is said that the man will be tied if he has to offer the house at a price to the local authority and then cannot sell to somebody else at a higher price. I agree; I said that earlier. That is why I have left it to the man. It is in his interest to ask a reasonable price. I offered to bring in the district valuer, but this frightened an hon. Member opposite and I rather glossed the matter over for that reason. Why should we not have the district valuer? If we get the chance we will try at a later stage to bring him in.
It was only in an attempt to meet some of the more unreasonable objections front the Government side that I put in the other ingenious piece of machinery, and hon. Members opposite did not like it because it prevented a man asking an excessive price from a local authority. The Tory Party does not mind if a man does that. It is part of Tory freedom that the man should be able to ask too much if it is only a local authority to which he is bound to offer the house.
The Amendment may appear in a Labour Party pamphlet and for that reason be anathema to the Government benches, but it follows very closely the lines of existing legislation. It goes beyond existing legislation in two respects. First, it makes practical efforts to help people who have to buy their houses because, togetherwise, they cannot get anywhere to live and have not enough money to pay the deposit formerly required, and it makes a practical effort to help them


by means of a repairs fund. Secondly, it ensures that the local authority has some control over the further disposition of properties upon which it has made 100 per cent. advances.

Question put, That those words be there added:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 131, Noes 182.

Division No. 33.]
AYES
[7.5 p.m.


Ainsley, J. W.
Hayman, F. H.
Popplewell, E.


Allen, Arthur (Bosworth)
Henderson, Rt. Hn. A. (Rwly Regis)
Price, Philips (Gloucestershire, w.)


Allen, Scholefield (Crewe)
Herbison, Miss M.
Probert, A. R.


Bence, C. R. (Dunbartonshire, E.)
Howell, Charles (Perry Barr)
Randall, H. E.


Benn, Hn. Wedgwood (Bristol, S.E.)
Hoy, J. H.
Reeves, J.


Benson, Sir George
Hughes, Cledwyn (Anglesey)
Reynolds, G. W.


Blackburn, F.
Hughes, Emrys (S. Ayrshire)
Roberts, Rt. Hon. A.


Bottomley, Rt. Hon. A. G.
Hughes, Hector (Aberdeen, N.)
Robinson, Kenneth (St. Pancras, N.)


Bowden, H. W. (Leicester, S.W.)
Hunter, A. E.
Rogers, George (Kensington, N.)


Brockway, A. F.
Hynd, H. (Accrington)
Ross, William


Broughton, Dr. A. D. D.
Irvine, A. J. (Edge Hill)
Short, E. W.


Brown, Thomas (Ince)
Irving, Sydney (Dartford)
Silverman, Julius (Aston)


Burton, Miss F. E.
Janner, B.
Silverman, Sydney (Nelson)


Butler, Herbert (Hackney, C.)
Jay, Rt. Hon. D. P. T.
Simmons, C. J. (Brierley Hill)


Champion, A. J.
Jeger, George (Goole)
Skeffington, A. M.


Chetwynd, G. R.
Jeger, Mrs. Lena (Holbn &amp; st. pnos, S.)
Slater, J. (Sedgefield)


Clunie, J.
Jones, Rt. Hon. A. Creech (Wakerield)
Smith, Ellis (Stoke, S.)


Colbek, P. H. (Birkenhead)
Jones, Jack (Rotherham)
Snow, J. W.


Corbet, Mrs. Freda
Jones, J. Idwal (Wrexham)
Sorensen, R. W.


Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)
Jones, T. W. (Merioneth)
Sparks, J. A.


Crossman, R. H. S.
Key, Rt. Hon. C. W.
Spriggs, Leslie


Darling, George (Hillsborough)
Lawson, G, M.
Steele, T.


Davies, Harold (Leek)

Storehouse, John


Deer, G.
Ledger, R. J.
Stones, W. (Consett)


de Freitas, Geoffrey
Lindgren, G. S.
Swingler, S. T.


Delargy, H. J.
Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson
Taylor, Bernard (Mansfield)


Dodds, N. N.
McAlister, Mrs. Mary
Thomson, George (Dundee, E.)


Dugdale, Rt. Hn. John (W. Brmwch)
McCann, J.
Thornton, E.


Ede, Rt, Hon. J. C.
MaoColl, J. E.
Timmons, J.


Edwards, Robert (Bilston)
McKay, John (Wallsend)
Viant. S. P.


Evans, Albert (Islington, S.W.)
McLeavy, Frank
Warbey, W. N.


Fernyhough, E.
Mahon, Simon
Weitzman, D.


Fitch, Alan
Mann, Mrs. Jean
Wells, Percy (Faversham)


Fletcher, Eric
Messer, Sir F.
Wells, William (Walsall, N.)


Fraser, Thomas (Hamilton)
Mikardo, Ian
White, Mrs. Elrene (E. Flint)


Gaitskell, Rt. Hon. H. T. N.
Mitchison, G. R.
Wilkins, W. A.


George, Lady Megan Lloyd (Car'then)
Moody, A. S.
Williams, W. R. (Openshaw)


Gibson, C. w.
Morrison, Rt. Hn, Herbert (Lewis'm, S.)
Willis, Eustace (Edinburgh, E.)


Grenfell, Rt. Hon. D. R.
Noel-Baker, Francis (Swindon)
Winterbottom, Richard


Grey, C. F.
Oliver, G. H.
Woodburn, Rt. Hon. A.


Griffiths, Rt. Hon. James (Llanelly)
Owen, W. J.
Woof, R. E.


Hale, Leslie
Padley, W. E.
Zilliacus, K.


Hamilton, W. W.
Palmer, A. M. F.



Hannan, W.
Parker, J.
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Hastings, S.
Pentland, N.
Mr. J. Taylor and Mr. J. T. Price.




NOES


Agnew, Sir Peter
Brooke, Rt. Hon. Henry
Duncan, Sir James


Altken, W. T.
Brooman-White, R. C.
Eden, J. B. (Bournemouth, West)


Alport, C. J. M.
Browne, J. Nixon (Craigton)
Elliott, R.W. (Ne'castle upon Tyne, N.)


Arbuthnot, John
Bryan, P.
Errington, Sir Eric


Armstrong, C. W.
Burden, F. F. A.
Fell, A.


Ashton, H.
Carr, Robert
Finlay, Graeme


Baldwin, Sir Archer
Channon, P.
Fisher, Nigel


Barber, Anthony
Clarke, Brig. Terence (Portsmth, W.)
Gammans, Lady


Barter, John
Cole, Norman
Garner-Evans, E. H.


Baxter, Sir Beverley
Conant, Maj. Sir Roger
Gibson-Watt, D.


Bell, Philip (Bolton, E.)
Cooper-Key, E. M.
Glover, D,


Bell, Ronald (Bucks, S.)

Glyn, Col. Richard H.


Bennett, F. M. (Torquay)
Craddock, Beresford (Spelthorne)
Goodhart, Philip


Bevins, J. R. (Toxteth)
Crosthwaite-Eyre, Col. O. E.
Graham, Sir Fergus


Bidgood, J. C.
Crowder, Sir John (Finchley)
Green, A.


Biggs-Davison, J. A.
Crowder, Petre (Ruislip—Northwood)
Gresham Cooke, R.


Bingham, R. M.
Cunningham, Knox
Grimond, J.


Bishop, F. P.
Dance, J. C. G.
Harris, Frederic (Croydon, N. W.)


Black, Sir Cyril
Davidson, Viscountess
Harris, Reader (Heston)


Body, R. F.
Deedes, W. F.
Harrison, Col. J. H. (Eye)


Bossom, Sir Alfred
de Ferrantl, Basil
Heald, Rt. Hon. Sir Lionel


Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hon. J. A.
Digby, Simon Wingfield
Henderson, John (Cathcart)


Boyle, Sir Edward
Dodds-Parker, A. D.
Hicks-Beach, Maj. W. W.


Braine, B. R.
Donaldson, Cmdr. C. E. McA.
Hill, Rt. Hon. Charles (Luton)


Braithwaite, Sir Albert (Harrow, w.)
Doughty, C. J. A.
Hill, Mrs. E. (Wythenshawe)


Bromley-Davenport, Lt.-Col. W. H.
du Cann, E. D. L.
Hill, John (S. Norfolk)




Hinchingbrooke, Viscount
Macmillan, Maurice (Halifax)
Sharpies, R. C.


Hirst, Geoffrey
Macpherson, Niall (Dumfries)
Shepherd, William


Hobson, John (Warwick &amp; Leam 'gt' n)
Maddan, Martin
Smyth, Brig. Sir John (Norwood)


Holland-Martin, C. J.
Markham, Major Sir Frank
Spearman, Sir Alexander


Hope, Lord John
Marlowe, A. A. H.
Speir, R. M.


Hornby, R. P.
Marshall, Douglas
Steward, Harold (Stockport, S.)


Horobin, Sir Ian
Mawby, R. L.
Steward, Sir William (Woolwich, W.)


Howard, Gerald (Cambridgeshire)
Maydon, Lt.-Comdr. S. L. C.
Storey, S.


Hutchison, Michael Clark(E'b'gh, S.)
Medlicott, Sir Frank
Stuart, Rt. Hon. James (Moray)


Hutchison, Sir Ian Clark (E'b'gh, W.)
Mott-Radclyffe, Sir Charles
Summers, Sir Spencer


Hutchison, Sir James (Scotstoun)
Nabarro, G. D. N.
Sumner, W. D. M. (Orpington)


Iremonger, T. L.
Nairn, D, L. S.
Temple, John M.


Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)
Noble, Michael (Argyll)
Thomas, P. J. M. (Conway)


Jenkins, Robert (Dulwich)
Nugent, G. R. H.
Thompson, R. (Croydon, S.)


Jennings, J. C. (Burton)
Oakshott, H. D.
Thornton-Kemsley, Sir Colin


Johnson, Dr. Donald (Carlisle)
Orr, Capt. L. P. S.
Turner, H, F. L.


Johnson, Eric (Blackley)
Orr-Ewing, C. Ian (Hendon, N.)
Tweedsmuir, Lady


Joseph, Sir Keith
Page, R. G.
Vickers, Miss Joan


Kaberry, D
Panned, N. A. (Kirkdale)
Vosper, Rt. Hon. D. F.


Kerr, Sir Hamilton
Partridge, E.
Wade, D. W.


Kershaw, J. A,
Peel, W. J.
Wakefield, Edward (Derbyshire, W.)


Kirk, P. M.
Pickthorn, Sir Kenneth
Wakefield, Sir Wavell (St. M'lebone)


Lagden, G, W.
Pilkington, Capt. R. A.
Wall, Patrick


Lambton, Viscount
Pitt, Miss E. M.
Ward, Rt. Hon. G. R. (Worcester)



Pott, H. P.
Ward, Dame Irene (Tynemouth)


Leavey, J. A.
Powell, J. Enoch
Webster, David


Legge-Bourke, Maj. E. A. H.
Price, David (Eastleigh)
Whitelaw, W. S. I.


Legh, Hon. Peter (Petersfield)
Price, Henry (Lewisham, W.)
Williams, Paul (Sunderland, S.)


Lindsay, Hon. James (Devon, N.)
Rawlinson, Peter
Williams, R. Dudley (Exeter)


Lloyd, Ma]. Sir Guy (Renfrew, E.)
Redmayne, M.
Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)


Longden, Gilbert
Rees-Davies, W. R.
Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick


Loveys, Walter H.
Roberts, Sir Peter (Heeley)
Woollam, John Victor


Lucas, Sir Jocelyn (Portsmouth, S.)
Robertson, Sir David



Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh
Robinson, Sir Roland (Blackpool, S.)
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Macdonald, Sir Peter
Roper, Sir Harold
Mr. Hughes-Young and


Maclean, Sir Fitzroy (Lancaster)
Ropner, Col. Sir Leonard
Mr. Chichester-Clark.


Macmillan, Rt. Hn. Harold (Bromley)
Russell, R. S.

7.15 p.m.

Mr. H. Brooke: I beg to move, in page 4, line 5, at the end to add:
(2) So much of the said section forty-three and of the said section seventy-five as prevents the making of an advance thereunder in respect of a house the estimated value of which or of the fee simple of which exceeds five thousand pounds shall cease to have effect.
There is a story behind the Amendment which I should like to disclose. A little time ago, the Hampstead Borough Council made official representations to the Minister of Housing and Local Government inviting his attention to this figure of £5,000 and asking whether it could be reviewed. At the same time, to make assurance doubly sure, it asked the Member of Parliament for that Borough to have a word with the Minister of Housing and Local Government. Both those people got together and brought Scotland into consultation, since the same limiting figure appears in the Scottish Act.
As a result, the Government concluded that there was no need to retain this limiting figure of £5,000, either in Section 43 of the Housing (Financial Provisions) Act, 1958, or Section 75 of the Housing (Scotland) Act, 1950, the corresponding Scottish provision. The basis on which the Government

have been proceeding has been to release local authorities from restrictions which seemed to be unnecessary, certainly when those were restrictions to which building societies were not subject.
It may be asked in what circumstances a local authority would be likely to want to lend on a house with a valuation of more than £5,000. One must bear in mind that the provisions to which I have referred permit advances to be made not only for the purchase but for the conversion of houses. It is in the interests of a local authority if an under-used large house in its area can be purchased and converted by somebody, thereby providing additional housing accommodation.
It is certainly the case in London that houses of that kind are in the market. They have a value of more than £5,000, and if that limit were left on the Statute Book, it would prevent local authorities from doing what would seem on general principle to be perfectly reasonable. The Government considered the matter and concluded that, while the amount could be raised to take account of the changed value of money, the simplest course was to remove the limit altogether.
Local authorities are responsible bodies, and this is an optional power. There is no need whatever for a local


authority to go beyond a valuation of £5,000 if it does not wish to do so. At the same time, it seems unreasonable that Parliament should stand in the way when a local authority, responsibly exercising its normal functions, sees a chance of assisting a would-be owner and a would-be converter to provide additional housing accommodation in its area. On those considerations, I commend the Amendment to the Committee.

Mr. Mitchison: On the last Amendment, we were considering the extent to which the Tory Party had advanced backwards in the course of sixty years. In this case, fortunately, we need consider only the extent to which it has advanced backwards over ten years. This provision was introduced in the Housing Act, 1949, and it is now proposed to do away with it. It is proposed after consultation between Scotland and England—and we may take it that Wales was also included. It came from a very partial point of view and the only representation which appears to have been made to the Minister came from Hampstead Borough Council. Hampstead is not an altogether typical constituency. At any rate, not all the constituencies represented on this side of the House are as prosperous as that.
Let us first consider what the Tories said when this provision was introduced in 1949. The Tories in the Committee on the 1949 Measure moved an Amendment to reduce the figure of £5,000 to £3,000. There was an argument about that.
The basis of the argument was the control of private building that was going on at that time, which was quite soon after the end of the last war, and which had been imposed for reasons which I hope and believe no longer apply. Lieut.-Colonel Walter Elliot, as he then was, speaking on behalf of the Tory Party, said:
The Minister … attempted to ride out of his difficulty on the point that this was an attempt to restrict the activities of local authorities, whereas he wished to extend them"—
that is because the Tories were in favour of £3,000 at the time—
If the Minister would extend them in the places where it is really desirable and necessary, where it would really lead to an alteration in the privileges of the private individual—that is to say, if he would extend the limits

under which local authorities can license building for the private individual—then we would be all for him. Then he would have our unanimous support,"—(OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee C, 12th April, 1949; c. 1884.]
Their attitude in 1949, therefore, was that we should first reduce the limit from £5,000 to £3,000, and if we did not agree to that they would say that it was all due to the control on private house building, and but for that they would be warmly in support of the figure of £5,000. We have found them inconsistent on many occasions, and much more recently than in 1949, so that we must not put the argument wholly on those grounds.
Who will benefit from the removal of the limit? One person will be the owner-occupier who cannot afford to do the work himself. It will benefit people like the Duke of Omnium by helping them to extend their ancestral castles, or tidy them up, or whatever needs to be done. It will help those who have large houses to get advances if they need them, although they may be doing well enough now, with the half-crowns of visitors, not to need it as much as they used to. At any rate, they are not the sort of people who particularly need to be helped out of public funds, rates and taxes.
Another person who will be helped is the professional convertor—the man who buys these houses and makes a little money out of converting them. We have not had many details about the case of Hampstead, and we have not heard of a single house which will not be added to or bought or converted because of the £5,000 limit. I do not believe that that limit does any harm to anybody. It merely prevents the provision of this assistance being extended to doubtful, and in many cases wholly undeserving, instances. I can see no reason whatever for the Amendment, and I do not think that we should accept it.
At any rate, we should not accept it without a much fuller statement of the reasons for it than the Minister has been able to give us today, and it ought to be accepted, if it is accepted at all, only if reservations are added to prevent it being used for the benefit of those people who do not need to take advantage of it, and those who take advantage of it only in order to get a little more money by speculation and conversion.

Mr. Page: The Amendment will be extremely beneficial, especially in the housing of elderly people. In my constituency there are many large houses with a value of over £5,000. One of them, formerly occupied by two elderly spinsters—it was definitely under-occupied—was recently purchased by a social welfare organisation which looks after elderly people. It has now been converted into one-roomed flatlets. I believe that there are about twelve or fourteen of these flaflets, and they are used purely and simply for elderly people.
In that case the institution had the necessary funds to carry out the work, but there are other houses in my constituency, and throughout the country, which are now under-occupied, and which it is extremely difficult to sell without some assistance of this sort. This assistance will pay local authorities well, because it will be creating dwellings for many people through the conversion of large houses. The Amendment will provide the opportunity for increasing housing accommodation, and I strongly support it.

Mr. C. W. Gibson: There are many houses of the kind referred to by the hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Page) in my constituency, but the people who convert them for old people's benefit are the borough councils who do not need this power because they can do the work under their existing powers, and do it more successfully than private people.

Mr. Page: But they do not do it.

Mr. Gibson: They do it in my part of London, and I know that a good deal of conversion of very large houses is being done in another part of London, for the benefit of elderly people. I say that although the political complexion of the council I have in mind is not mine. The removal of the £5,000 limit will not help that council because it already has the necessary powers.
I was present in the debate in Committee on the 1949 Bill when the £5,000 limit was inserted, and I remember the very violent opposition put up by the Tories, and also their reasons for opposing the insertion. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) has a good case for arguing that the only people whom the Amendment will help are the speculative builders

who will be able to go to a local authority and obtain permission for a loan of up to £5,000 in order to convert old houses into small flats, and make a very considerable profit in the process.
I did not think that that was the purpose of the Bill; I thought that the Bill was introduced in order to provide homes for people who have not been able to get them because they have not been able to find the necessary capital. It is completely wrong to widen the application of the Bill to such an extent that it becomes a property exploiter's paradise, enabling him to pick up enormous profits.
Local housing associations can do the job, and are doing it in some parts of London, under their existing powers. They can do it with assistance from the local authorities, and if it were not for the excessive prices at which some of these houses are being sold they would probably be able to do a great deal more. If we allow the Amendment to go through we want it to be clearly understood that it is not one which will assist ordinary wage earners to buy houses of their own on reasonable terms.

Mr. Norman Cole: I have followed the argument of the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) very closely, but I could not understand why he cavilled at the consistency of our policy.

Mr. Mitchison: The inconsistency of it.

Mr. Cole: No, the consistency. In 1949 we objected to the amount being more than £3,000 because of the then controls on private building. The hon. and learned Member has admitted that there are now no controls, so it is consistent for us to agree to a larger figure than £5,000.

Mr. Mitchison: The hon. Member has missed the point. The Tory Party said that but for the existence of the controls it would support the £5,000 figure completely.

Mr. Cole: If we would have supported the figure of £5,000 with a diminution of controls on private building in 1949, how much more consistent it is, when there are no controls, to take the limit off


altogether. I suggest that the hon. and learned Member has underlined the consistency of our policy.
The hon. and learned Member has got the idea into his mind that as soon as this magic sum of £5,000 is mentioned all the people who want to buy houses to live in will rush along to get loans from the local council. He overlooks the other side of the picture. It will be possible to provide homes in the form of flatlets or parts of a house because of this provision, and I should have thought that the hon. and learned Gentleman would be pleased that this presents one more possibility of providing homes for people. I am surprised that he stresses the other point of view. A large number of people who desire to buy a house for £5,000 and upwards would not go to the local council for assistance. They would have resources of their own or would negotiate the matter through a bank or a building society.
The hon. and learned Gentleman did not refer to the discretion of local authorities to deal with this matter as they think tit. As the Minister pointed out, this is not obligatory, it is permissive. We may leave it to the discretion and common sense of local authorities.

7.30 p.m.

Mr. Mitchison: I hope that we may arrive at a decision on this matter fairly rapidly, and I advise my hon. Friends to vote against the Amendment. I can give my reason briefly. It has been indicated by the hon. Member for Bedfordshire, South (Mr. Cole). I am not convinced that there are any cases in which the £5,000 limit has prevented acquisition or conversion. I believe that people who would require more than £5,000 can carry out the operation for themselves. I do not think there are any cases where it is desired to raise the limit. I have not heard of any, except possibly in Hampstead, which is not good enough.
All I would say about the discretion of local authorities is that I would trust a great many local authorities in this matter, but I can think of some local authorities in respect of which it would be a good thing to retain a limit which has lasted for ten years now and which is being withdrawn just before a General Election for reasons which at any rate are not very detailed.

Question put, That those words be there added:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 169, Noes 121.

Division No. 34.]
AYES
[7.33 p.m.


Agnew, Sir Peter
Craddock, Beresford (Spelthorne)
Hill, John (S. Norfolk)


Aitken, W. T.
Crosthwaite-Eyre, Col. O. E.
Hinchingbrooke, Viscount


Alport, C. J. M.
Crowder, Sir John (Finchley)
Hirst, Geoffrey


Arbuthnot, John
Cunningham, Knox
Hobson, John(Warwick &amp; Leam'gt'n)


Armstrong, C. W.
Dance, J. C. G.
Holland-Martin, C. J.


Ashton, H.
Davidson, Viscountess
Hope, Lord John


Baldwin, Sir Archer
Deedes, W. F.
Hornby, R. P.


Barber, Anthony
de Ferranti, Basil
Howard, Gerald (Cambridgeshire)


Barter, John
Digby, Simon Wingfield
Hughes-Young, M. H. C.


Baxter, Sir Beverley
Dodds-Parker, A. D.
Hutchison, Michael Clark(E'b'gh, S.)


Bell, Philip (Bolton, E.)
Donaldson, Cmdr, C. E. McA.
Hutchison, Sir Ian Clark (E'b'gh, W.)


Bell, Ronald (Bucks, S.)
du Cann, E. D. L.
Hutchison, Sir James (Scotstoun)


Bennett, F. M. (Torquay)
Dunoan, Sir James
Iremonger, T. L.


Bevins, J. R. (Toxteth)
Eden, J. B. (Bournemouth, West)
Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)


Bidgood, J. C.
Elliot, R.W. (Ne'castle upon Tyne, N.)
Jenkins, Robert (Dulwich)


Biggs-Davison, J. A,
Errjngton, Sir Eric
Jennings J. C (Burton)



Fell, A.



Bingham, R. M.
Finlay, Graeme
Johnson, Dr. Donald (Carlisle)


Bishop, F. P.
Fisher, Nigel
Johnson, Eric (Blackley)


Black, Sir Cyril
Gammans, Lady
Joseph, Sir Keith


Body, R. F.
Garner-Evans, E. H.
Kerr, Sir Hamilton


Bossom, Sir Alfred
Gibson-Watt, D.
Kershaw, J. A.


Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hon. J. A.
Glover, D.
Kirk, P. M.


Boyle, Sir Edward
Glyn, Col. Richard H.
Lagden, C. W.


Braine, B. R.
Goodhart, Philip
Lambton, Viscount


Braithwaite, Sir Albert (Harrow, W.)
Graham, Sir Fergus
Leavey, J. A.


Brooke, Rt. Hon. Henry
Green, A.
Legge-Bourke, Maj. E. A. H.


Brooman-White, R. G.
Gresham Cooke, R.
Legh, Hon. Peter (Petersfield)


Browne, J. Nixon (Craigton)
Grimond, J.
Lindsay, Hon. James (Devon, N.)


Burden, F. F. A.
Harris, Reader (Heston)
Lloyd, Maj. Sir Guy (Renfrew, E.)


Carr, Robert
Harrison, Col. J. H. (Eye)
Longden, Gilbert


Channon, P.
Heald, Rt. Hon. Sir Lionel
Loveys, Walter H.


Clarke, Brig. Terence (Portsmth, W.)
Henderson, John (Cathcart)
Lucas, Sir Jocelyn (Portsmouth, S.)


Cole, Norman
Hicks-Beach, Maj. W. W.
Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh


Conant, Maj. Sir Roger
Hill, Rt. Hon. Charles (Luton)
Macmillan, Rt. Hn. Harold (Bromley)


Cooper-Key, E. M.
Hill, Mrs. E. (Wythenshawe)
Macmillan, Maurice (Halifax)




Macpherson, Niall (Dumfries)
Powell, J. Enoch
Thompson, R. (Croydon, S.)


Maddan, Martin
Price, David (Eastleigh)
Thornton-Kemsley, Sir Colin


Markham, Major Sir Frank
Price, Henry (Lewisham, W.)
Turner, H. F. L.


Marlowe, A. A. H.
Rawlinson, Peter
Tweedsmuir, Lady


Marshall, Douglas
Redmayne, M.
Vickers, Miss Joan


Mawby, R. L.
Rees-Davies, W. R.
Vosper, Rt. Hon. D. F.


Maydon, Lt.-Comdr. S, L. C.
Roberts, Sir Peter (Heeley)
Wade, D. W.


Medlicott, Sir Frank
Robinson, Sir Roland (Blackpool, S.)
Wakefield, Edward (Derbyshire, W.)


Mott-Radclyffe, Sir Charles
Roper, Sir Harold
Wakefield, Sir Waved (St. M'lebone)


Nabarro, C. D, N.
Ropner, Col. Sir Leonard
Wall, Patrick


Noble, Michael (Argyll)
Russell, R. S.
Ward, Rt. Hon. G. R. (Worcester)


Nugent, G. R. H.
Sharples, R. C.
Ward, Dame Irene (Tynemouth)


Oakshott, H. D.
Shepherd, William
Webster, David


Orr-Ewing, C. Ian (Hendon, N.)
Smyth, Brig. Sir John (Norwood)
Whitelaw, W. S. I.


Page, R. G.
Spearman, Sir Alexander
Williams, Paul (Sunderland, S.)


Panned, N. A. (Kirkdale)
Speir, R. M.
Williams, R. Dudley (Exeter)


Partridge, E.
Steward, Harold (Stockport, S.)
Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)


Peel, W. J.
Storey, S.
Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick


Pickthorn, Sir Kenneth
Summers, Sir Spencer
Woollam, John Victor


Pilkington, Capt. R. A.
Sumner, W. D. M. (Orpington)



Pitt, Miss E. M.
Temple, John M.
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Pott, H. P.
Thomas, P. J. M. (Conway)
Mr. Chichester-Clark and




Mr. Bryan.




NOES


Ainsley, J. W.
Hastings, S.
Pentland, N.


Allen, Arthur (Bosworth)
Hayman, F. H.
Price, Philips (Gloucestershire, W.)


Allen, Scholefield (Crewe)
Henderson, Rt. Hn. A. (Rwly Regis)
Probert, A. R.


Bence, C. R. (Dunbartonshire, E.)
Herbison, Miss M.
Pursey, Cmdr. H.


Benn, Hn. Wedgwood (Bristol, S.E.)
Hughes, Cledwyn (Anglesey)
Randall, H. E.


Benson, Sir George
Hughes, Emrys (S. Ayrshire)
Reeves, J.


Blackburn, F.
Hughes, Hector (Aberdeen, N.)
Reynolds, G. W.


Bottomley, Rt. Hon. A. G.
Hunter, A. E.
Robinson, Kenneth (St. Pancras, N.)


Bowden, H. W. (Leicester, S. W.)
Hynd, H. (Accrington)
Rogers, George (Kensington, N.)


Brockway, A. F.
Irvine, A. J. (Edge Hill)
Ross, William


Broughton, Dr. A. D. D.
Janner, B.
Short, E. W.


Brown, Thomas (Ince)
Jay, Rt. Hon. D. P. T.
Silverman, Julius (Aston)


Burton, Miss F. E.
Jeger, Mrs. Lena (Holbn &amp; St. Pncs, S.)
Silverman, Sydney (Nelson)


Butler, Herbert (Hackney, C.)
Jones, Rt. Hon. A, Creech (Wakefield)
Simmons, C. J. (Brierley Hill)


Champion, A. J.
Jones, Jack (Rotherham)
Skeffington, A. M.


Chetwynd, G. R.
Jones, J. Idwal (Wrexham)
Slater, J. (Sedgefield)


Clunie, J.
Jones, T. W. (Merioneth)
Smith, Ellis (Stoke, S.)


Collick, P. H. (Birkenhead)
Key, Rt. Hon. C. W.
Sorensen, R. W.


Corbet, Mrs. Freda
Lawson, G. M.
Sparks, J. A.


Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)
Ledger, R. J.
Spriggs, Leslie


Crossman, R. H. S.
Lindgren, G. S.
Steele, T.


Darling, George (Hillsborough)
Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson
Stonehouse, John


Davies, Harold (Leek)
McAlister, Mrs. Mary
Stones, W. (Consett)


Deer, G.
McCann, J.
Swingler, S. T.


de Freitas, Geoffrey
MacColl, J. E.
Taylor, Bernard (Mansfield)


Delargy, H. J.
McKay, John (Wallsend)
Thomson, George (Dundee, E.)


Dugdale, Rt. Hn. John (W. Brmwch)
McLeavy, Frank
Thornton, E.


Ede, Rt. Hon. J. C.
Mahon, Simon
Timmons, J.


Edwards, Robert (Bilston)
Mallalieu, E. L. (Brigg)
Viant, S. P.


Evans, Albert (Islington, S.W.)
Mann, Mrs. Jean
Warbey, W. N.


Fernyhough, E.
Messer, Sir F.
Wells, Percy (Faversham)


Fitch, Alan
Mikardo, Ian
Wells, William (Walsall, N.)


Fletcher, Eric
Mitchison, G. R.
White, Mrs. Eirene (E. Flint)


Fraser, Thomas (Hamilton)
Moody, A. S.
Wilkins, W. A.


George, Lady Megan Lloyd (Car'then)
Morrison, Rt. Hn. Herbert (Lewis'm, S.)
Williams, W. R. (Openshaw)


Gibson, C. W.
Noel-Baker, Francis (Swindon)
Winterbottom, Richard


Grenfell, Rt. Hon. D. R.
Oliver, G. H.
Woodburn, Rt. Hon. A.


Grey, C. F.
Owen, W. J.
Woof, R. E.


Griffiths, Rt. Hon. James (Llanelly)
Padley, W. E.
Zilliacus, K.


Hamilton, W. W.
Palmer, A. M. F.



Hannan, W.
Parker, J.
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:




Mr. J. Taylor and Mr. J. T. Price.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill.

Miss Herbison: Before we leave the Clause there are two points I should like to raise. I was astonished at the reply given by the Parliamentary Secretary on the question of houses being sold only for owner-occupation. He said that there was no logic in that, and that if the local

authority considered a house to be sound someone should be allowed to buy and let it. The Minister seemed to forget that under this Clause whoever was buying a house would have a mortgage of 100 per cent. from the local authority. It seems to us on this side of the Committee very wrong that that should be so, and I ask the Minister to consider this matter again before the Report.
No one lets a house unless he feels that he can make a profit out of the letting. The logic of the Minister's argument would be that the local authority would give a 100 per cent. mortgage in order to allow someone to make a profit. I am certain that that is not the intention of the Bill, and it is for that reason that I ask the Minister to give further consideration to it.
The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland has just come into the Chamber. He knows that no one has been able to build houses to let in our country for a very long time, apart from those built by public authorities such as local authorities and the Scottish Special Housing Association. When he was sitting beside the Parliamentary Secretary he should have told him that what we are asking is important to Scotland.
7.45 p.m.
I was very sorry indeed that the Government did not feel that they could accept even part of our Amendment that suggested a repairs fund. The Minister said that the owner of a house would plan his domestic budget to meet repairs. Remember that we are dealing with pre-1919 houses and that some of them may have been built long before 1919. The best manager or planner in the world could not foresee every eventuality to such a house. No matter how he planned his Budget the time would come when he would find it impossible to carry out the necessary repairs.
We believe in a repairs fund. A man owning his own house will do everything possible to keep it in repair, and when eventualities come that mean a big expense a repairs fund would help him considerably. We should make the best use of our pool of houses; we ought not to let houses become derelict because money is not there to keep them in repair.
For those two reasons we are anxious about a repairs fund, and even at this late stage I ask the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland to consult the Minister to see whether, between now and Report, he will bring his influence to bear on the Minister from the Scottish point of view because of our serious lack of proper housing accommodation. The Minister and the Secretary of State for Scotland might then put down an Amendment for the Report stage that would be accept-

able. We do not say that our Amendment was absolutely watertight, but it was a very good Amendment, and we ask the Minister to do something—

The Chairman: I would remind the hon. Lady that the Amendment to which she refers does not appear in the Clause. She can only discuss what is in the Clause, as amended.

Miss Herbison: I was only saying that I should have liked to see it in the Clause, Sir Charles.

The Chairman: But it is not there.

Miss Herbison: Even if my comments were out of order, Sir Charles, I hope that they will do some good.

Mr. H. Brooke: The remarks of the hon. Lady the Member for Lanarkshire, North (Miss Herbison) apply to England and Wales and Scotland equally. In accordance with your Ruling, Sir Charles, I will not follow her into references to a repairs fund.
I rebut the contention that it is unreasonable to permit local authorities to allow up to 100 per cent. on houses which are not to be owner-occupied. Very frequently they will not do it, but I can see no reason to put in a restriction to prevent them. The Small Dwellings Acquisition Acts were confined to advances for owner-occupiers, but the advances are not so confined under the Housing Acts, which permit advances up to 90 per cent. Local authorities do not always go as far as that.
We are removing that limitation and are allowing local authorities to lend up to 100 per cent. I do not see why we should go back on what is in the law already and has been accepted for many years. There may be suitable cases in which the local authority should lend on a house which is not to be owner-occupied. The obvious case is where somebody is buying a house for conversion purposes and thereby assisting the local authority by bringing into existence a greater number of separate dwellings in the area. That principle has been accepted by Parliament for a very long time and I could not accept the contention that we should go back on it.

Mr. Reynolds: About twelve months ago, the Metropolitan Boroughs Standing Joint Committee approached the


Minister and asked him to introduce legislation on the lines that are now suggested. He replied that his view was that it was desirable for prospective purchasers to provide a deposit on a mortgage granted by a local authority. Twelve months have passed, and we now have the Minister himself bringing forward legislation containing this Clause that allows the local authorities to do something that he rejected a year ago.
I do not particularly object to the provision, but I should like the Minister to tell us why we have this sudden change. There must have been some good reason for that refusal twelve months ago. How have the circumstances changed? Is it that the Minister, when making his first draft, looked, perhaps, at the Labour Party's proposal and thought this a good idea? Or is it because people are being pushed out of requisitioned houses and are also suffering from the operation of the Rent Act? Or is it because there is a General Election in the not-too-far-distant future? I think that we ought to know the reasons for the change.

Mr. Mitchison: Are we not to have an answer to my hon. Friend's question?

Mr. H. Brooke: The Government gave careful consideration to this matter in the light of the new Bill they were to introduce. That Bill was not before the House when the reply was made to the Standing Joint Committee. We are now giving fresh opportunities to building societies to assist in the work of house purchase, and it seemed to the Government that this was the right occasion to review, once again, the powers of local authorities.
In that review, it emerged as somewhat anomalous that the building societies had power, by law, to lend up to 100 per cent., but that the local authorities had not. In the circumstances, there seemed no reason to maintain that restriction on the local authorities any longer. I appreciate that hon. Members opposite do not really regard local authorities as responsible bodies; but we, on our side, are anxious to give them the maximum of freedom.

Mr. A. Woodburn: From what the Minister says, I understand that a local authority at present letting houses can

sell one of them to someone who, in turn, can let it to someone else. Is not that a somewhat roundabout road? Could not the local authority continue to let the house?

Mr. Brooke: The normal case with which we are dealing is the case where a man approaches the local authority, saying that he has the opportunity to buy a house already in private ownership, and would like an advance. In those circumstances, we are, by this Clause, somewhat enlarging the scope of the local authorities' power to assist him.

Mr. Woodburn: But did I misunderstand the right hon. Gentleman in thinking that he said that a local authority could sell one of its houses to someone who could afterwards let it?

Mr. Mitchison: I think that the right hon. Gentleman showed a great lack of foresight when he answered the Standing Joint Committee. He must have known, even then, that a General Election was coming.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 4.—(DUTY OF LOCAL AUTHORITIES TO MAKE GRANTS TOWARDS CERTAIN IMPROVEMENTS.)

The Chairman: I think that the first Government Amendment to this Clause, that in page 4, line 10, goes with the Government Amendment in page 4, line 34, that in page 8, line 36, and that in page 9,1ine 12.

Mr. H. Brooke: Yes, Sir Charles, they all raise the same point.
I beg to move, in page 4, line 10, at the beginning to insert:
Subject to subsection (4) of this section".
As will be seen, two of these Amendments are to Clause 13 which relates to dwellings owned by local authorities, whereas Clause 4 relates to those in private ownership. It seems desirable to put into the Bill this statutory limitation which will prevent an application for a standard grant being entertained if the dwelling itself has been provided later than the end of 1944. That, in fact, has been administrative practice in dealing with existing improvement grants. Advice was given to local authorities in a Circular of 1951, and the reason is obvious. One


does not want a situation in which someone who, after building a house, immediately makes an application for a grant to improve it and gets that application agreed to.
Until now these grants have been discretionary, so that there was not the same need for statutory limitation; but now that these standard grants will not, in the same sense, be at the discretion of the local authority it might be possible—if we did not make this Amendment—in theory, at any rate, for someone to build a house without, say, a bathroom and, having done so, to apply for a standard grant to put one in.
In such a contingency, it would be an absurdity if the local authority found itself obliged to pay the standard grant to the owner—it would be an unintended subsidy. The object of these Amendments, if they are accepted, is to render statutory what has been for a long time the existing practice, which is to ensure that grants are not paid for houses that were completed after the end of the last war.

Mr. Michael Clark Hutchison: It would seem that the Amendment would exclude flats or maisonettes which come into being as a result of the conversion of old houses, and I do not see why they should be excluded. I should be grateful if my right hon. Friend would so alter the Bill that conversions—and, indeed, new houses—could attract grant. Perhaps he would also take counsel with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland and see that the same thing is done for that part of the Bill dealing with Scotland.

Mr. Page: I should like to pursue the point that has been put to the Committee by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, South (Mr. M. Clark Hutchison). Quite obviously, there was a gap in the Bill as originally drawn. If the local byelaws allowed one—as I believe they do in some places—to build a house without a larder or a domestic hot water system one could do so and then, after the Bill became law, claim the standard amenity grant.
Some Amendment was obviously necessary here, but my right hon. Friend has provided that no claim shall be made for

this standard grant in respect of a dwelling provided after 1944. Had it been for a house erected after that time, I might not have objected to the Amendment, but dwellings have been provided in the older houses since 1944.
I imagine that a great deal of conversion has gone on during these fifteen intervening years, and, in many cases, the division of older houses into flats has not been accompanied by the provision of separate lavatories or bathrooms for the dwellings provided. If the Amendment stands as it is, it will be impossible for the owner-occupier, or the owner of the building, to obtain a standard grant if the conversion has taken place since 1944, that is to say, in the words of the Amendment, if a dwelling had been provided after 1944. I should have thought that that was just the sort of case which might well be assisted under the Bill, namely, conversions which have taken place in older houses during the past fifteen years.
8.0 p.m.
Evidently one must put on a restriction—and I press my right hon. Friend to consider a restriction which takes the date right up to the time when these proposals were published—so that only those dwellings provided after November last, when the White Paper was issued and one knew the sort of proposals which were coming, should be excluded in order that any conversions of older houses which have taken place in the past fifteen years, for which amenities have not been provided for each dwelling, might come into this scheme.

Mr. Mitchison: Will the right hon. Gentleman answer one question in advance of his speech? He told us that these matters have been regulated by administrative practice hitherto. What has been the administrative practice with regard to conversions?

Mr. H. Brooke: I do not quite know what the hon. and learned Gentleman means by asking me to say something in advance of my speech. If he himself is going to speak, I think it would be better if he were to give his views on the Amendment and that I should wind up the debate in general.

Mr. Mitchison: With respect, I would prefer to wait until the Minister has spoken. I should like to know his answer to that question.

Mr. Brooke: My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, South (Mr. M. Clark Hutchison) and my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Page) have raised what is, quite frankly, a new point, so far as I am aware, in the whole administration of improvement grants. There have been many complaints about improvement grants from one angle or another, but I am not aware of this particular point ever having been put to the Department at any rate, and certainly not to the Minister. I should like a little time to think about what my hon. Friends from both Scotland and England have said.

Mr. Page: If I may interrupt my right hon. Friend, the point has not been put to the Department as yet, of course, because until now improvement grants have been permissive in the hands of local authorities. Under the Bill there is now at least provision for a partial claim for the standard grants. That is the difficulty. One does not want to give the right to claim to an owner if he builds a house after the Bill has been passed.

Mr. Brooke: I am not speaking in any hostile spirit. I am trying to see my way through this. My hon. Friend the Member for Crosby says that this has not arisen. It did not arise in an acute form because the local authority had power to say "No". Some complaints have come in about improvement grants to the effect that local authorities have said "No" and have said it unreasonably. Certainly I cannot charge my memory with any case where there has been a dispute about the grant application such as my hon. Friend clearly has in mind; that is to say, where there is a dwelling which is without one of the standard amenities and has been built since the end of the war, and where the owner wanted to put one in but found the local authority unyielding.
The hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) asked what was the present practice. Here we come to the distinction between the house and the conversion. Of course, there are conversion grants, and anyone who was in the process of converting a house could apply for a grant for that purpose. Indeed, it could be a grant of up to £400 covering far more than the putting in of the standard amenities, so that anybody actually in the process of creating

a new dwelling by conversion did not come up against any difficulty of this kind. I gather from the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby that he himself saw difficulties in a case where somebody had built a house since 1944 and left something out and then might wish to put it in with the benefit of grant.
I am not quite sure whether I ought to make another speech after the hon. and learned Member for Kettering has intervened, but I will say at this stage that I hope that the Committee will accept the Amendment. We clearly must have some safeguarding words in the Bill. If my hon. Friends who have raised these points will give me some further particulars in support of the kind of case they have in mind, I will willingly undertake to look into it. I am simply trying to ensure that there is a sensible safeguarding provision in the Bill. There must be a safeguarding provision, and I say quite frankly that I had put into the Amendment the date which has until now been the standard date for administrative practice.

Mr. Mitchison: I have some sympathy with the right hon. Gentleman in this matter. He has produced a Bill under which it would have been possible to play some pretty tricks on local authorities. A man could build a house and if he managed to do it without putting in one thing or another he might then have called on the local authorities to supply the gap he had deliberately left. I do not object to the right hon. Gentleman remedying that. I am rather sorry it has been done by reference to a fixed date. There may be no alternative, but, of course, the fixed date tends to become more and more out of date as time goes on.
As regards conversions, I entreat the right hon. Gentleman to be vigilant. I should have thought that conversions were a far easier case in which something which ought to have been put in could be left out and a claim brought under the Bill afterwards. It might not necessarily be done deliberately; quite possibly, something might be left out because the man concerned was not thinking of this Bill but did not want to spend too much money on the conversion. If that is the position, I do not think that he ought to be helped out of public funds now or be


put into a position where he can avail himself of the facilities of the Bill.
I should expect the right hon. Gentleman to share that point of view. I agree that the most satisfactory thing now is to let the Amendment pass. We take no objection to it. Let us see about conversions if and when any question arises.

Amendment agreed to.

Mr. Reynolds: I beg to move, in page 4, line 10, at the beginning to insert:
Subject to the provisions of this and the next following section".
With the permission of the Chair, perhaps I may refer to the consequential Amendment in page 4, line 34, at the end to add:
(4) Notwithstanding anything in the foregoing provisions of this section, a local authority shall not approve an application for assistance under this section in respect of any dwelling, being one of two or more dwellings owned by the applicant and comprised in one hereditament, unless the local authority are satisfied that on the completion of the works specified in that application and in any other application or applications made at the same time as that application, all the dwellings owned by the applicant in the hereditament will be provided with the standard amenities.
We are, of course, now coming to the part of the Bill which makes it compulsory for local authorities, subject to very few safeguards, to make a standard improvement grant to applicants. I am wholly in favour of that. In the past, too many local authorities have not operated as well as they ought to have done in this mattes, or adopted as they ought to have done the various improvement grant provisions which we have had since 1949. It has been up to the local authorities to decide whether or not they made a grant. A great deal of the background material on which they based their decisions about whether or not to make a grant came not from any Housing Act or regulation, but from advice given by the Minister from time to time in the form of circulars to local authorities.
There was no statutory background. In effect, it was just general advice given to the Minister on the sort of things which, from an administrative point of view, he might want to look at before deciding whether or not any particular grant made by a local authority would rank for grant from his Department.
We are now about to have the rather different situation where the local

authority has to make a grant. As I understand, the safeguards that the local authority will have will not be the long list of things which have appeared in Ministry circulars in the past. They will presumably be such safeguards as are actually written into the Bill or are somehow or other provided for by statutory regulation under it. At present I am concerned that local authorities have not the safeguards which they ought to have. The proposal of the Government is that the grant should be given for a separate dwelling. If, as one can only assume, the definition of "dwelling" is that in Section 189 of the Housing Act, 1957, I can see that the local authority may from time to time be placed in a difficult position.
It is unreasonable that the local authority should be allowed only to consider the dwelling in question for which application has been made, and provided that that dwelling is fit for human habitation apparently, as the Clause is drafted, no regard can be paid to the other dwellings in the same hereditament. It may well be that the owner of the property lives in one dwelling and has let two or even three other dwellings within the hereditament and is applying for a standard improvement grant to carry out improvements in his own dwelling.
It may even be that his dwelling is all right and fit for human habitation. It may be that there are statutory notices under the Public Health Act and under the Housing Act outstanding against the owner of that property trying to force him to do necessary work to put the other dwellings in the hereditament in a state fit for human habitation. Yet the dwelling for which the application for the standard grant is made is fit for human habitation and the local authority would have no option, under the Clause as drafted, provided that the other qualifications were fulfilled, but to make a standard grant although the other two dwellings in the house may be in a terrible condition.
This is unfair on the local authority, and although I appreciate that there may be certain difficulties arising from the Amendment, I hope that the Minister can find a way of giving rather more safeguards to local authorities than they have under the Clause as drafted. There may be other reasons which may make it


undesirable for the local authority to be forced to make such a grant not connected necessarily with the condition of the other dwellings in the property. The landlord may live in one dwelling of the property, sub-let another dwelling and be doing his utmost to get the tenant convicted by making his life as miserable as possible. I very much doubt whether a local authority should be forced to assist a landlord of that kind. The only safeguard which I can see is to make it necessary for the landlord to make the standard improvements in both of the dwellings in that particular property.
I think that I have said enough to make clear the point which I have in mind. As I said earlier, I am not particularly pressing this Amendment, but I believe that safeguards for local authorities, particularly in cases where other dwellings in the hereditament may be in a state unfit for habitation, should be rather stronger than they are under the Clause as it is drafted.

8.15 p.m.

Mr. A. Evans: I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. Reynolds) will not be too modest about the wording of his Amendment, which, I think, would meet a difficulty. I think that my hon. Friend has in mind the tenement house in which there are a number of dwellings in one hereditament. This type of house is to be found in large numbers, certainly in the older parts of London. Unless an alteration along the lines suggested by my hon. Friend is made in the Bill, an owner of a tenement house will be able to go to a local authority and get a grant for standard amenities for only one part of the tenement house, leaving the other parts of that tenement house in a poor state—perhaps in a state unfit for human habitation.
Clause (5) lays down that the local authority shall satisfy itself that the dwelling is fit for human habitation. It restricts the survey of the local authority to the dwelling. Under that limiting proviso, a local authority cannot have regard to the other dwellings in the house. It may be that the ground floor of the house is occupied by the owner and can be passed as fit for human habitation by the local authority, which may decide that it would remain fit for habitation for fifteen years. But the other dwellings in the hereditament may be quite unfit for human habitation.
I am sure that the Minister would not agree that it would be sensible to force upon a local authority—because this is obligatory the grant must be given—to advance public money for the improvement of one part of the house, the rest of which is unfit. To meet this difficulty, I hope that the Minister will accept the Amendment or undertake to insert words in the Bill at a later stage which will meet the point raised by the Amendment.

Mr. H. Brooke: The Government desire that houses should be improved. When I first saw the two Amendments in the name of the hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Reynolds), I felt sympathetically disposed towards the idea underlying them. It was only when I went into the matter further, and tried to think it out in practical terms, that I came to the conclusion that if we accepted the Amendments, and wrote them into the Bill, they would be liable to hold up rather than expedite the carrying out of improvements.
Hon. Members opposite and I have the same type of house in mind—the big house one particularly finds in London, which is often let floor by floor but not in separate self-contained flats. The idea of the Amendment is to ensure that if a standard grant is given for any one of the floors to carry out the improvement, then the necessary improvement should be done throughout the house and not on that floor only. One consideration which one must bear in mind, although it is not conclusive, is that one might find a case where an owner could not afford to do the whole job at once, but could do it bit by bit. In those circumstances, he might find himself seriously held up in carrying out what he desired to do in the house.
There is, however, an even more material obstacle in the way, and that is that in a number of these houses, as I think the hon. Member for Islington, North will agree, one might well find that on one floor it was literally impossible to find room for a bathroom and there would he no physical means of complying with the requirements on that floor. Yet if the Amendment were written into the Bill that would debar the making of a standard grant for any of the other floors and it might he that anybody living in the whole of the house


may suffer because we had amended the Bill so as to make it impossible to proceed floor by floor.
This is a serious obstacle in the way of what I confess struck me at first sight as a good idea, but, if the hon. Member considers what I have said, I hope that he will come to the same conclusion as I have—that it would be impossible with any hope of success to impose the kind of sanction which is implicit in the Amendment, and it would be too risky to debar an owner from getting a standard grant if he was not able to do all the work on all the floors of the house at the same time.
It is on those grounds that I must advise the Committee, in the interests of getting on with improvement work, that it would be unwise to incorporate these Amendments in the Bill.

Mr. Mitchison: I share some of the right hon. Gentleman's doubts about the Amendment. I suppose that it would be going too much against Tory philosophy to put into the Bill a provision that the landlord shall not claim a standard grant for himself until he has done all that he can to claim it for the other flats occupied by his tenants in the same building. I put that suggestion forward without much hope that it will be accepted.
I wish to call the right hon. Gentleman's attention to one point. I note what he has said about the floor in which a bathroom could not be provided. When one comes to consider houses, what is to happen to a man who would like to have a standard grant, but who is unable to put in a bathroom, although he would like to do the other things? I am not at all certain that he is provided for in the Bill. We shall see about that when we reach that stage.

Mr. A. Evans: To some extent I see the practical point made by the Minister, that the Amendment might hamper the installation of amenities floor by floor if the landlord could not see his way clear to putting in the amenities in all the floors at one time. However that may be, I drew the Minister's attention to subsection (2) of the Clause, by which a local authority must satisfy itself that the dwelling will be in such a condition as not to be unfit for human habitation and is likely to remain in that condition for

fifteen years. I put this point to the Minister and I hope that he will deal with it.
If the local authority inspects a tenement house and finds that the ground floor meets the conditions specified in subsection (2), shall the local authority have no regard to the other part of the hereditament, for example the upper floors? Shall it allow the grant to be made for the lower floor which is passable, whilst the upper floors are unfit for human habitation and, possibly, the roof is in a serious condition?
If the Minister does not alter this part of the Clause, he will be saying to the local authority, "You may use public money. You may make the grant to improve a part of a house the rest of which may be unfit for human habitation." In that event the Minister should come to the aid of the local authority. He should at least undertake to reconsider the matter so that under subsection (2) the local authority will be charged to have regard to all the dwellings in the tenement house.

Mr. Reynolds: I accept a very great deal of what the Minister said in reply to the Amendment. I could probably go on and add another half-dozen instances which it would be difficult to bring within the provisions of the Amendment. I was well aware of that at the beginning, and that was why I said that I was not tied to the precise wording of the Amendment. I hope that the Minister will undertake to have another look at the question which was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South-West (Mr. A. Evans) about the rest of the dwellings in the house, or the rest of the hereditament, being at least in a state fit for human habitation. The Minister's arguments were mainly directed to it being perhaps impracticable to make the standard improvements in other parts of the hereditament. To a very large extent I am prepared to accept that. On the other hand, I do not see that it would be impracticable to insist on the other parts of the hereditament being in a state fit for human habitation, because otherwise we are in the ridiculous position of the local authority paying public money for the improvement of one part—

Mr. Cole: I agree with much of what the hon. Member says. Surely he realises that there are other statutes which deal with the rest of the premises to which he refers not being fit for human habitation.

Mr. Reynolds: I was coming to the other statutes. It would be a ridiculous position for the local authority to spend a great deal of public money to improve the basement of the property and the local authorities using the time of many public servants in trying to enforce statutory notices under the Public Health or Housing Acts concerning the other floors of the property. Under the Bill as drafted, however, the owner would have the right o demand an improvement grant. If the local authority turned down his demand the owner would be able to take it to court or take other proceedings to enforce his demand for the improvement grant.
I am not opposed to the provision, but it is a little unfair on the local authority if a man is trying to force it to carry out work. As the Minister will know, some of these cases drag on for years. The landlord, whom the local authority might have been chasing for years, can then come along and demand the £100 or £150. Whilst the Minister is not prepared to accept the idea of the standard improvement being carried out in all the dwellings in the hereditament, I hope he will meet us to some extent by providing that the local authority shall be satisfied that all the dwellings are at least in a state fit for human habitation.

Mr. Mitchison: Before the Question is put, in the light of the discussion does not the right hon. Gentleman think that he might undertake to examine this matter again, without necessarily undertaking to introduce an Amendment?

Mr. H. Brooke: My desire is to get these standard grants applied for and utilised as widely as possible, because I believe that through the agency of the Clause we should be able to bring about in a comparatively short time far-reaching improvements in the conditions under which many people live. I am quite ready to look at any possibility that is suggested to me for making this standard grant system a success.
I am quite sure that the hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Reynolds), who is well acquainted with these matters and has studied them, will appreciate also that there may be a house the top floor of which is unfit for human habitation, not because the roof is leaking but because of the narrowness of the stairs or the inadequacy of the lighting, and there may

be no reasonable physical means of altering that state of affairs. It would be a pity to put into the Bill any provision that would have the effect of holding up the improvement of the rest of the house if there were these severely practical difficulties about improving one of the dwellings therein.
Having said that, however, I will undertake to examine this and all the subsequent Clauses in the Bill in order to ascertain whether we can further improve the arrangement. As I say, my desire is that these powers, when they are on the Statute Book, shall be widely used and shall not be frustrated because we have not framed our legislation skilfully enough.

Mr. Reynolds: As the Minister has said that he will have another look at this matter, perhaps we can come back to it at a later stage. In the circumstances, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

8.30 p.m.

Mr. Mitchison: I beg to move, in page 4, line 13, after "provided", to insert:
for the exclusive use of its occupants".
The Minister has provided in this subsection for one of the standard amenities being for the exclusive use of the occupants of the dwelling. They can have, according to paragraph (c), a water closet to themselves, but they may be called upon to share even a hot water supply. I feel that that cannot be quite what is intended, and that the intention must be that these amenities should all be for the exclusive use of the occupants. This Amendment, which is really almost a drafting Amendment only, is moved to secure that result. It would involve a consequential Amendment, which is on the Paper, in page 4, line 18, to leave out from "closet" to "and" in line 19, and would have the effect of giving the occupants the exclusive use of all the standard amenities instead of one.
I am not sure whether I am intended now to refer at the same time to that other Amendment in line 18. It is a matter which may be dealt with shortly and I can do so if it is convenient. It is the question of the water closet. It is suggested from this side of the Committee that if we leave the subsection as it


is it would be complied with by providing a water closet down at the end of the garden. I cannot think that that is what is really intended, and it seems reasonable that the water closet should be in the house, or if, as is often the case, there is not quite room enough in the House, for it to be up against the wall of it. I think that is provided for by the word "contiguous" in my further Amendment to line 18, after "closet" to insert "in or contiguous to the dwelling". We do not want houses provided with water closets at a distance nowadays.

Mr. H. Brooke: One of these Amendments raises a somewhat different point from that of the other, but the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) is quite right that it is not desirable that there should be a differentiation between one of these standard amenities and the rest in relation to the question whether they are for the exclusive use of the occupier. I think that that is a wise Amendment. The Government are quite prepared to accept it, with the hon. and learned Gentleman's Amendment providing that the water closet shall be contiguous to the dwelling.
I need not go into all the details because there are some complications in particular, not very common, cases, which would arise in back-to-back dwellings and the like. Nevertheless, there are many cases in which it would be valuable to have this Amendment. The hon. and learned Gentleman mentioned the sort of thing that might arise. I have in mind the kind of case one knows so well in the North of England, where there are closets in blocks at a distance from the dwelling, perhaps behind. I do not think that that should be regarded as a satisfactory amenity, and on balance it will be an improvement of the Clause if we alter it as he suggests. On behalf of the Government I am very happy to accept all these three Amendments.

Mr. Mitchison: I thank the right hon. Gentleman. I hope I shall not be regarded as denigrating my own profession when I say that I lived for a long time in a flat in the Inner Temple where the water closet was down the stairs half way between that flat and the one below it.

Amendment agreed to.

Mr. Reynolds: I beg to move, in page 4, line 16, after "shower" to insert "preferably".

Mr. Mitchison: I regret that it is partly my own fault that my hon. Friend is moving the wrong Amendment.
I beg to move, in page 4, line 16, after "shower" to insert "and a wash-hand basin, both".
I understand that reference may be made at the same time to the first of the Amendments to line 16, the one my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. Reynolds) tried to move, about "preferably". I understand reference may be made also to my hon. Friend's further Amendment about "preferably", in page 4, line 16, after "shower" to insert:
and a wash-hand basin, both preferably".
I hope I have correctly the Ruling which, I understand, was to be made.
I, therefore, am concerned only with a wash-hand basin.

The Temporary Chairman (Sir Norman Hulbert): I would inform the hon. and learned Member that the two Amendments to which he has referred, containing the word "preferably", have not been selected.

Mr. Mitchison: There are two other Amendments connected with this matter —Clause 6, page 5, line 21, leave out "fifty" and insert "fifty-five", and page 5, line 26, leave out "twenty-five" and insert "thirty", which add £5 to the two sums. But if I may deal with the substantial point, it is felt widely that if we are to include a bath or a shower as a standard amenity in a bathroom, or preferably in a bathroom, we should also include a wash-hand basin. No council house plan nowadays would omit a wash-hand basin.
There is no difficulty about the water supply, because another of the standard amenities is the hot water supply. This has been so submitted to me by some very practical people, the Urban District Councils Association. I was about to say that it was the Association's major comment on the Bill, but I would hardly put it as strongly as that. It certainly sent me a long and reasoned case for the inclusion of a wash-hand basin, but perhaps I need not trouble the Committee with the argument in detail.
In the other two Amendments in Clause 6, to which I have referred,


account is taken of an additional £10 cost for this purpose, that is to say of an additional £5 grant. In a dirty place like London, baths are no doubt desirable and wash-hand basins are a very standard amenity indeed. If I may say so, I know of no place in London dirtier than the House. [HON. MEMBERS: "Order."] I mean, of course, physically dirty. I find I have to wash more frequently here, in the Palace of Westminster, than almost anywhere else.

Mr. Bevins: I do not in the least dissent from the hon. and learned Member's concluding remarks. I think that he is wholly right. The Amendment which we are now discussing is linked with the later Amendments to Clause 6 to which he has referred. As Clause 4 stands, the line to which the Amendment refers reads:
a fixed bath or shower in a bathroom;
I think that the hon. and learned Member would like it to read:
a fixed bath or shower and wash-hand basin, both in a bathroom …
That would involve an additional standard grant of £5 towards the cost of installing the wash-hand basin.
I am sorry to say that, as drafted, the Amendment does not quite achieve its purpose in that if a house already had a bath hut not a wash-hand basin in the bathroom, the local authority would be obliged to pay up to £30 for the installation of a wash-hand basin only. When that was mentioned to me, I confess that I said that it was a matter only of up to a certain figure and that wash-hand basins do not cost that much money. But I am told that basins of a very lavish kind can be purchased.
In order to secure that only the proper sum is paid for the installation of a wash-hand basin, I am advised that a wash-hand basin would have to be added as the fifth standard amenity and a separate sum provided for it under Clause 6 (2) to which the hon. and learned Member's later Amendments relate. I am not absolutely sure what view my right hon. Friend has on this matter—[HON. MEMBERS: "Chance your arm."]—but I am quite sure that he is ready to give further examination to it. If the hon. and learned Member will leave it at that I think that my right hon. Friend will be able to meet him at a later stage.

Mr. Mitchison: This very human and intimate appeal is really touching, and in the circumstances I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Mr. Eric Fletcher: Before this Amendment is with-drawn—

Mr. Arthur Skeffington: It cannot be withdrawn.

Mr. Fletcher: It can be withdrawn eventually.

Mr. Skeffington: It cannot be withdrawn.

Mr. Fletcher: I do not know why not. Sir Norman, I did not rise primarily to argue whether the Amendment could be withdrawn or not. What I wanted to say was that I hope this question will not be dismissed summarily. It is important that wash-basins should be provided in houses which have not got them. I should have thought that as a general proposition it is also desirable that if a bathroom is being added to a house, it should have a washbasin in it. It is the general experience that of all modern houses—[An HON. MEMBER: "Council houses."]—including all council houses, a bathroom is equipped with a bath and with a wash-basin.
As I understand the Clause we are not dealing with modern houses but with old houses built when what are now considered standard amenities did not exist. My hon. Friends and colleagues from Islington know very well that the majority of houses in Islington, apart from those built in recent years by the local authority, are old houses built 80, 90 and in many cases 100 years ago. The majority have no bathrooms and many are without wash-basins. Some are without water closets except at the end of the garden.
Therefore, when the Bill becomes law local authorities will have the problem of considering the circumstances in which these grants should be given, because we are dealing here with the adaptation of old houses to modern requirements. In most cases it may no doubt be possible to put a wash-basin in the bathroom but there will be some cases in which, either for lack of space or because of drainage arrangements or otherwise, it is not physically possible to put the wash-basin in the bathroom. Hence, as I understand it, the introduction into the Amendment


of the word "preferable"—[An HON. MEMBER: "It is not there."] Perhaps not, but that may have been the object of one of the Amendments, for we are discussing more than one. I appreciate that the particular Amendment was not selected, but I am dealing with the general case and the Minister has said he is not in a position to give an undertaking about what his right hon. Friend can or cannot do.

Mr. Bevins: I think I made it clear that my right hon. Friend will examine this proposal.

Mr. Fletcher: That is what I understood. I agree that the undertaking was that the Minister would examine this proposal. I shall be glad if in the course of his examination the Minister will consider that, whereas it is generally desirable that wash-basins should be in bathrooms, there is something to be said for having them in a separate compartment in some instances. One advantage of such an arrangement, particularly in a large house with a large number of occupants, is that somebody could be having a bath and at the same time somebody else could be washing his hands. This is sometimes convenient because if the wash-basin is in the bathroom that room can be occupied in most instances only by one person at a time.
8.45 p.m.
It is to be hoped that with the provision of more bathrooms the habit of taking baths will grow among people who hitherto have unfortunately been denied that opportunity. On the other hand, it will frequently be found convenient that while one occupant of a house is having a bath the remaining occupants should not be denied the opportunity of washing, and that is the result if the only wash-basin is in the bathroom.
Therefore, I hope that the Minister in examining this important matter, which has a bearing on the cleanliness and comfort of a great many people, will ensure that the provisions of the Clause are so drawn that they will not exclude either of the desirable alternatives that I have mentioned, a bathroom with a washbasin in it and a bathroom with a washbasin in a separate room.
Local authorities will obviously have some difficulty in interpreting the applica-

tions which are made to them under the Clause. Therefore, it is most desirable that when the Clause finally emerges into law its provisions should be as clear as possible and also that it should be defined in such a way as to give the maximum of latitude for the construction of the additional amenities, having regard to the different kinds of old houses which will be adapted and equipped when the Bill becomes law.

Mr. Mitchison: I am sure that hon. Members on this side of the Committee, at any rate, all share the views so ably expressed on behalf of what I might call "United Islington" on the important question of the conjunctional separation of the bathroom and the washbasin.
We cannot withdraw the Amendment now, but the Parliamentary Secretary will understand that we will not say anything when it is put to the vote. He will understand that we are relying on his promise to see that his right hon. Friend considers the matter. We trust that his right hon. Friend will show himself to be favourably disposed towards wash-basins. I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman could not have said a little more in support of his right hon. Friend on that matter, but I understand his difficulty.

Mr. Bevins: What has been said will certainly be studied by my right hon. Friend. Perhaps I may be allowed to say that one reason why we have so far taken the view that the washbasin should be in the bathroom is that this is an obligatory procedure for local authorities and it is conceivable that many of them would resent paying grants towards the cost of providing what they might regard as unsatisfactory facilities if the washbasin were not in the bathroom. We shall, however consider what has been said.

The Temporary Chairman: Does the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) seek leave to withdraw the Amendment? It is in order to do so.

Mr. Mitchison: If I can, then I will do so, Sir Norman. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Mr. Reynolds: I beg to move, in page 4, line 17, after "supply", to insert:
connected to a bath and kitchen sink".


If we are to have these grants, which local authorities have to make, and if one of the things required to be put into a house by means of a grant is a hot water supply, it is essential that it should be clearly laid down, so that there shall be no doubt about it whatever, that the supply has to be made available connected to both the bath and the kitchen sink. As the Clause stands, it might well be possible to instal a hot water supply for the kitchen sink, but not for the bath, or, conversely, to instal a hot water supply for the bath, and nothing for the sink.
If there is to be a grant of as much as £75 for the installation of a hot water supply, local authorities should be able to insist that such a supply is made available for both points at which it is likely to be used, namely, at the sink and at the bath. I am even informed that a fixed bath may not have a water supply and that it could be termed a fixed bath so long as it was fixed in the corner of a room and had some means for the disposal of waste water. I am sure that what the Minister intends is that there should he a hot and cold water supply for such a bath.
My Amendment deals only with the hot water supply on which public money is to be spent, although I would appreciate the Minister's views on other aspects of this matter.

Mr. Bevins: One of the standard amenities is a hot water supply, and the hon. Member wants to include in that list a hot water supply, connected to the bath and kitchen sink. I am advised that the effect of the Amendment as it stands is to make available a very generous grant of up to £75, as in Clause 6 (2), for connecting an existing hot water supply to a kitchen sink.
That is the difficulty. It will also give rise to the need to define what a kitchen sink is. That is not an insuperable difficulty, but what is a major difficulty is that where there is an existing hot water supply, and supposing the Amendment were accepted, an applicant would be entitled to this very generous grant. My right hon. Friend's view is that there is a clear-cut case for helping towards the cost of providing a hot water supply as such in dwellings which have no supply.
The new scheme of standard grants applies to those dwellings, but where there is already some form of hot water supply the need to help is less strong, certainly not strong enough to justify the undoubted complications which would follow any attempt to split the amount of grant between the various possible arrangements for supplying hot water.
I confess that I am in some difficulty because my knowledge of plumbing is very restricted, but I can see the major difficulty of making this provision in cases where there is an existing hot water supply of one kind or another.

Mr. Mitchison: This is not a matter of plumbing, but of a little common sense and getting proper drafting if the present drafting of the Amendment will not do. What is intended is perfectly clear. As it is, the provision reminds me of an hon. Friend of mine who was moving an Amendment to a recent Scottish poaching Measure which provided that one should fish only with rod and line in certain places. My hon. Friend observed, not without force, that it all depended on what one put on the end of the line, and he proceeded to give us a lurid description of the things which one could put on the end of a hook and line.
Here we are discussing the provision of a hot water supply. Surely my hon. Friend is justified in insistng that there should be a provision about the purposes for which the hot water supply is to be used. Have we reached the stage of being unable or doubtful about how to define a kitchen sink? I am reminded of the story of the gentleman who was asked to define an elephant and who said that it was difficult to define but easy to recognise. I should have thought that only the most stringent Parliamentary draftsman would require a definition of a kitchen sink. One knows it when one meets it, and that is that. If, in this famous Bill which will revolutionise everything and cause untold benefits to people all over the country, the Government cannot arrange to provide for a hot water supply to be connected both to the bath and the kitchen sink, it is not plumbing knowledge that they lack, but a little horse sense.

Mr. A. Evans: As my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) said, it is clear that this matter has not been properly thought out. We cannot have a hot water supply without its being connected to something. It must run somewhere. Presumably it will run to the bath and to the kitchen sink. That would appear to be quite clear. The Amendment seeks to make it quite clear. The Parliamentary Secretary said that we cannot allow £75 of public money to be spent if a hot water supply already exists. Are we to believe, as the Parliamentary Secretary suggested, that a local authority would make a grant of £75 of public money to provide a hot water supply when one already existed?
We could go on talking about baths, hand-basins and hot water supplies indefinitely. The practical course would be for the Parliamentary Secretary to accept the Amendment, and then, on Report, to make any alterations that he wishes. I hope that he will accept the Amendment, with the proviso that on reflection he may have to insert amending words on Report.

Mr. Gibson: I want to raise one point of practical application. The Parliamentary Secretary said that where a hot water supply to the sink already existed and the tenant wanted to have it extended to the bath, he would be able to get a grant of £75, which would represent half the cost. That would mean that it would cost £150 to extend the hot water supply to the bath, which is absolute nonsense. Even in these days of expensive building it does not cost that much to extend an already existing hot water supply from the sink to a tap in the bath.
If the Parliamentary Secretary cannot find a better reason than that for opposing the Amendment I hope that he will accept my hon. Friend's advice and accept it, or at least do as he did previously and undertake to reconsider the matter in order to try to make sure that where conversions and improvements take place they shall be up to the standard which municipal authorities apply in the case of their own houses so that there will be a decent hot water supply to the sink and to the bath. The Minister could agree to that without there being any danger of giving away £75 with which to do the job.

9.0 p.m.

Mr. Reynolds: We cannot accept the argument of the Parliamentary Secretary. I assume I am right in thinking that

in this Clause the Government consider that a hot water supply made available with the aid of one of these grants will be laid on to the bath and the kitchen sink. I hope that I am right, and if I am not I shall be amazed. The hon. Gentleman must put himself in the position of a local authority receiving an application for a grant. Local authorities now have to make these grants. They are no longer in the position of being able to turn down an application.
Suppose a local authority receives an application for a grant to install a hot water supply just to the bath or just to the kitchen sink. What is the authority to do? Is it to say, "No, we insist that the supply be laid on to both and therefore we refuse to make the grant"? Can the applicant challenge that decision and take the matter to court, and will this be decided eventually by a judge? If so, it is most unfair to local authorities to expect them to interpret what the Government have in mind.
I assume that the Government desire to do the best possible job and that they want a hot water supply to be available for the kitchen sink. If so, it should be made clear, because otherwise a local authority may find itself in the invidious position of not knowing whether to accept or reject an application and whether, if an application be rejected, the applicant can appeal.

Mr. Bevins: I do not think that there is a great deal that I can add. The view of my right hon. Friend is that there is an obvious case for assisting in the cost of providing a hot water supply where such a facility is lacking. It is true that the effect of the Amendment as drafted, would be to make available a grant of up to £75—I am not saying that the grant would be £75, but it would be up to that figure—for the connection of the existing hot water supply to the kitchen sink.

Mr. Mitchison: If there is a hot water supply, is it not connected to the kitchen sink already?

Mr. Bevins: There are plenty of houses where the hot water supply is not connected to the kitchen sink or to the bathroom.
As the Bill is framed at present it would be possible to bring about what the hon. Gentleman desires only by adding a separate amenity altogether, the amenity


of a hot water supply to the kitchen sink, and to provide for separate payment which would not be related to the maximum of £75 which we have been discussing. I doubt whether a grant ought to be paid for this one item if the house has all the standard amenities referred to in the Clause. I appreciate what has been said and suggest that the hon. Gentleman leave it to my right hon. Friend and myself to examine without being committed in any way. That is as far as I can go, and I say that in good faith.

Mr. Mitchison: I am sorry to disappoint the hon. Gentleman regarding my advice to my hon. Friends. Once we have taken humane pity on a Parliamentary Secretary left stranded by his Minister and ignorant of the views of the Minister on washbasins. On this occasion it is perfectly obvious that the intention of the Amendment could be carried out. It is no more difficult for a competent draftsman to work this into the Bill than it is for a competent plumber to connect a hot water supply. If the Amendment is badly drafted the hon. Gentleman can get it put right on Report, but we propose to do our best to get it into the Bill in its present form.

Mr. Bevins: If the hon. and learned Gentleman is not prepared to accept what I have said he must take his own course. Under the Bill it is quite feasible to extend the number of standard amenities from three or four to a dozen, if the Committee is so minded. But here the Government are trying to set down clearly and simply a limited number of elementary amenities which all dwellings ought to have. If the list is to be extended and reviewed we are not likely to achieve the primary and fundamental purpose of the Government.

Mr. Mitchison: On this side of the Committee we have no use for a hot water system when we have not the foggiest idea what it is supposed to do except sit by itself somewhere. We would rather that the obvious purpose of the Amendment were put into the Bill properly, and if the Parliamentary Secretary will not undertake to put it in properly we will do our best to put it in improperly.

Question put, That those words be there inserted:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 118, Noes 161.

Division No. 35.]
AYES
[9.6 p.m.


Abse, Leo
Fraser, Thomas (Hamilton)
Mikardo, Ian


Ainsley, J. W.
George, Lady Megan Lloyd (Car'then)
Mitchison, G. R.


Allen, Arthur (Bosworth)
Gibson, C. W.
Moody, A. S.


Allen, Scholefield (Crewe)
Grenfell, Rt. Hon. D. R.
Morrison, Rt. Hn. Herbert (Lewis'm, S.)


Awbery, S. S.
Grey, C. F.
Noel-Baker, Francis (Swindon)


Benn, Hn. Wedgwood (Bristol, S.E.)
Griffiths, Rt. Hon. James (Llanelly)
Noel-Baker, Rt. Hon. P. (Derby, S.)


Benson, Sir George
Hamilton, W. W.
Oliver, G. H.


Blackburn, F.
Hannan, W.
Owen, W. J.


Blyton, W. B.
Hastings, S.
Padley, w. E.


Bottomiey, Rt. Hon. A. G.
Hayman, F. H.
Paget, R. T.


Bowden, H. W. (Leicester, S.W.)
Henderson, Rt. Hn. A. (Rwly Regis)
Parker, J.


Brockway, A. F.
Herblson, Miss M.
Pentland, N.


Broughton, Dr. A. D. D.
Hughes, Cledwyn (Anglesey)
Price, J. T. (Westhoughton)


Brown, Thomas (Ince)
Hughes, Emrys (S. Ayrshire)
Probert, A. R.


Burton, Miss F. E.
Hughes, Hector (Aberdeen, N.)
Pursey, Cmdr, H.


Butler, Herbert (Hackney, C.)
Hunter, A. E.
Reeves, J.


Champion, A. J.
Hynd, H. (Accrington)
Reynolds, G. W.


Chetwynd, G. R.
Hynd, J. B. (Atteroliffe)
Robinson, Kenneth (St. Pancras, N.)


Clunie, J.
Janner, B.
Rogers, George (Kensington, N.)


Colllok, p. H. (Birkenhead)
Jay, Rt. Hon. D. P. T.
Ross, William


Corbet, Mrs. Freda
Jeger, Mrs. Lena (Holbn) &amp; St. Pncs, S.)
Short, E. W.


Craddook, George (Bradford, S.)
Johnson, James (Rugby)
Silverman, Julius (Aston)


Grossman, R, H. S.
Jones, Rt. Hon. A. Creech (Wakefield)
Silverman, Sydney (Nelson)


Darling, George (Hillsborough)
Jones, Jack (Rotherham)
Skeffington, A. M.


Davies, Harold (Leek)
Jones, J. Idwal (Wrexham)
Slater, J. (Sedgefield)


Davies, Stephen (Merthyr)
Jones, T. W. (Merioneth)
Smith, Ellis (Stoke, S.)


Deer, G.
Lawson, G. M.
Sorensen, R. W.


de Freitas, Geoffrey
Ledger, R. J.
Sparks, J. A.


Delargy, H. J.
Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson
Spriggs, Leslie


Dugdale, Rt. Hn. John (W. Brmwch)
McAlister, Mrs. Mary
Steele, T.


Ede, Rt. Hon. J. C.
McCann, J.
Stonehouse, John


Edwards, Robert (Bilston)
MacColl, J. E.
Stones, w. (Consett)


Evans, Albert (Islington, S.W.)
McKay, John (Wallsend)
Swingler, S. T.


Fitch, Alan
McLeavy, Frank
Taylor, Bernard (Mansfield)


Fletcher, Eric
Mallalleu, E. L. (Brigg)
Taylor, John (West Lothian)


Foot, D. M
Mann, Mrs. Jean
Thomson, George (Dundee, E.)




Thornton, E.
White, Mrs. Eirene (E. Flint)
Woof, R. E.


Ungoed-Thomas, Sir Lynn
Williams, W. R. (Openshaw)
Zilliaous, K.


Viant, S. P.
Winterbottom, Richard



Wells, William (Walsall, N.)
Woodburn, Rt. Hon. A.
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:




Mr. Wilkins and Mr. Simmons.




NOES


Agnew, Sir Peter
Gammans, Lady
Mathew, R.


Aitken, W. T.
Garner-Evans, E. H.
Mawby, R. L.


Alport, C. J. M.
Gibson-Watt, D.
Maydon, Lt.-Comdr. S. L. C.


Amory, Rt. Hn. Heathcoat (Tiverton)
Glover, D.
Medlicott, Sir Frank


Arbuthnot, John
Glyn, Col. Richard H.
Nabarro, G. D. N.


Armstrong, C. W.
Graham, Sir Fergus
Nairn, D. L. S.


Ashton, H.
Green, A.
Noble, Michael (Argyll)


Baldwin, Sir Archer
Cresham Cooke, R.
Nugent, G. R. H.


Barber, Anthony
Grimond, J.
Page, R. G.


Barter, John
Harris, Reader (Heston)
Pannell, N. A. (Kirkdale)


Baxter, Sir Beverley
Harrison, Col. J. H. (Eye)
Partridge, E.


Bell, Philip (Bolton, E.)
Heald, Rt. Hon. Sir Lionel
Peel, W. J.


Bevins, J. R. (Toxteth)
Henderson, John (Cathcart)
Pickthorn, Sir Kenneth


Bidgood, J. C.
Hicks-Beach, Maj. W. W.
Pitt, Miss E. M.


Biggs-Davison, J. A,
Hill, Rt. Hon. Charles (Luton)
Pott, H. P.


Bingham, R. M.
Hill, Mrs. E. (Wythenshawe)
Powell, J. Enoch


Bishop, F. P.
Hirst, Geoffrey
Prioe, David (Eastleigh)


Black, Sir Cyril
Hobson, John(Warwick &amp; Leam'gt' n)
Price, Henry (Lewisham, W.)


Body, R. F.
Holland-Martin, C. J.
Rawlinson, Peter


Bossom, Sir Alfred
Hope, Lord John
Roberts, Sir Peter (Heeley)


Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hon. J. A.
Hornby, R. P.
Robinson, Sir Roland (Blackpool, S.)


Boyle, Sir Edward
Howard, Gerald (Cambridgeshire)
Roper, Sir Harold


Braine, B. R.
Hughes-Young, M. H. C.
Russell, R. S.


Braithwaite, Sir Albert (Harrow, W.)
Hutchison, Michael Clark (E'b'gh, S.)
Sharpies, R. C.


Bromley-Davenport, Lt.-Col. W. H.
Hutchison, Sir Ian Clark (E'b'gh, W.)
Spearman, Sir Alexander


Brooke, Rt. Hon. Henry
Hutchison, Sir James (Scotstoun)
Speir, R. M.


Brooman-White, R. C.
Iremonger, T. L.
Steward, Harold (Stockport, S.)


Browne, J. Nixon (Craigton)
Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)
Storey, S.


Burden, F. F. A.
Jenkins, Robert (Dulwich)
Summers, Sir Spencer


Carr, Robert
Jennings, J. C. (Burton)
Sumner, W. D. M. (Orpington)


Channon, P.
Johnson, Dr. Donald (Carlisle)
Temple, John M.


Chichester-Clark, R.
Johnson, Erio (Blackley)
Thomas, P. J. M. (Conway)


Clarke, Brig. Terence (Portsmth, W.)
Joseph, Sir Keith
Thompson, R. (Croydon, S.)


Cole, Norman
Kerr, Sir Hamilton
Tilney, John (Wavertree)


Conant, Maj. Sir Roger
Kershaw, J. A.
Turton, Rt. Hon. R. H.


Cooper, A. E.
Kirk, P. M.
Vickers, Miss Joan


Cooper-Key, E. M.
Lagden, G. W.
Vosper, Rt. Hon. D. F.


Craddock, Beresford (Spelthorne)
Lambton, Viscount
Wade, D. W.


Crosthwaite-Eyre, Col. O. E.
Leavey, J. A.
Wakefield, Edward (Derbyshire, W.)


Crowder, Sir John (Finchley)
Legge-Bourke, Maj. E. A. H.
Wakefield, Sir Wavell (St. M'lebone)


Cunningham, Knox
Legh, Hon. Peter (Petersfield)
Wall, Patrick


Dance, J. C. G.
Lindsay, Hon. James (Devon, N.)
Ward, Rt. Hon. G. R. (Worcester)


Davidson, Viscountess
Linstead, Sir H. N.
Ward, Dame Irene (Tynemouth)


Deedes, W. F.
Lloyd, Maj. Sir Guy (Renfrew, E.)
Webster, David


Digby, Simon Wingfield
Longden, Gilbert
Whitelaw, W. S. I.


Dodds-Parker, A. D.
Loveys, Walter H.
Williams, Paul (Sunderland, S.)


Donaldson, Cmdr. C. E. McA.
Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh
Williams, R. Dudley (Exeter)


du Cann, E. D. L.
Mackeson, Brig. Sir Harry
Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)


Duncan, Sir James
Maclean, Sir Fitzroy (Lancaster)
Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick


Elliott, R. W. (Ne'castle upon Tyne, N.)
Macmillan, Maurice (Halifax)
Woollam, John Victor


Errington, Sir Eric
Macpherson, Niall (Dumfries)



Farey-Jones, F. W.
Maddan, Martin



Fell, A.
Markham, Major Sir Frank
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Finlay, Graeme
Marlowe, A. A. H.
Mr. Redmayoe and Mr. Bryan.


Fisher, Nigel
Marshall, Douglas

Amendments made: In page 4, line 18, leave out from "closet" to "and" in line 19.—[Mr. Mitchison.]

In page 4, line 18, after "closet", insert:
in or contiguous to the dwelling".—[Mr. Mitchison]

In page 4, line 34, at end add:
(4) An application under this section shall not be entertained if it relates to a dwelling provided after the end of the year nineteen hundred and forty-four.—[Mr. Bevins.]

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Clause as amended, stand part of the Bill.

9.15 p.m.

Mr. E. Fletcher: I do not think that anybody can pretend to be very happy with the Clause as it now stands. We have made a number of Amendments to it, and we have put forward a number of other Amendments which neither the Minister nor the Parliamentary Secretary really understood but which, at any rate, they promised to examine, some sympathetically and others not so sympathetically. There have appeared on the Order Paper also certain Amendments which were not called and which, therefore, can


be dealt with only inferentially but which, nevertheless, give rise to matters which fall within the purview of the examination which the Minister promised to give the Clause between now and the Report stage.
There is one important aspect of the Clause which has not had any discussion, at any rate, not while I have been in the Chamber. I mean subsection (3). I hope that, before the Report stage, the Government will consider the effect which that subsection will now have as a result of the Amendment made in the earlier part of the Clause. As the subsection stands, as I understand it, it operates to provide that no application to a local authority for an improvement grant under this part of the Bill may be made unless the applicant specifies to the local authority that, in addition to the particular amenity he wants to introduce into the dwelling,
the dwelling is already provided"—
I will just say in parenthesis that I am not sure that I know what "provided" means—
with the remainder
of the amenities. I do not regard that as a good provision in itself. I am not sure whether my hon. Friends will agree with me, but I myself do not believe that it should be a prerequisite of the making of a grant to a landlord who wants to introduce one particular amenity Into an old house that all the other standard amenities should have been provided. In my view, in a great many cases, particularly in the antiquated buildings in Islington, it just is not practicable.
I ask the Minister to bear in mind the practical application of this part of the Bill. The standard type of house with which I am familiar in my constituency is a house built about 100 years ago, very often not with a bathroom at all, because in those days it was not common to put in bathrooms as we now know them. Very often, there was no water closet. If there was a water closet attached to the house, it was very often outside it. Those houses were intended for occupation by one family. Today, most of them are occupied by three or four families, and it is not uncommon for all the families to share the one water closet in the house. Some of the houses have a bathroom and some have not.
The difficulty with which local authorities will be confronted in applying it is that it does, throughout, speak of dwellings and not houses.
I assume that the word "dwelling" has the meaning given it in the Housing Act, 1957, with the result that in practice a great many houses consist of three or more dwellings, and it is not uncommon for the landlord to occupy one of the dwellings in the house and to sub-let two other dwellings in the same house. There will be many cases in which it is possible and, of course, desirable that the landlord should add some amenity to the house, such as a bathroom, water closet or facilities for storing food in one or other of the dwellings of the house, and if he wants to do that he ought to be encouraged to do it. But I should not have thought that he would be encouraged to do it if it is made obligatory upon him as a condition of doing it to add at the same time to each of the dwellings all the other standard amenities, because in some cases that would not be possible. In many houses it would be possible to provide a bathroom, but not possible for structural reasons to provide a water closet, or vice versa.
Since the Bill was introduced considerable variations have been made to provisions in paragraphs (a), (b), (c) and (d) of subsection (1). For example, we have now provided that the water closet should be in or contiguous to the dwelling. But if an old house is divided into three dwellings it may be impossible to provide a water closet in each of them. If there is one in the house at present it might be possible to add a second, but not physically possible to add two more water closets and it might be possible in the other dwellings to add a bathroom or facilities for storing food. Therefore, I hope that the Minister will appreciate that there is not much sense in discouraging such landlords by making a condition of what they want to do something which they cannot possibly do.
We have heard a great deal about hot water supply, but we have not been told clearly what a hot water supply is. I think that we all know what a bathroom is, and most people know what a water closet and kitchen sink are.

Mr. Ede: Except the draftsmen.

Mr. Fletcher: Yes, except the draftsmen. But what is a hot water supply?


[An HON. MEMBER: "Something which supplies hot water."] We sought to define that by saying that a hot water supply should be connected to a bathroom and kitchen sink. However, that was resisted.
I want the Minister to apply his mind to the facts. We find that a great many houses with three dwellings, one above the other, are heated by a fire in the ground floor dwelling. If the fire in the ground floor dwelling is sufficiently stoked, it will heat a boiler in a bathroom which may be in the same house but in a different dwelling. At the moment, that bathroom is often shared by the three families.
In some circumstances, that sharing arrangement works all right, but in other circumstances it does not. It may well be possible to provide these other amenities in each of the dwellings but it might not be possible, and might even not be necessary, to provide a separate bathroom in each of the dwellings. What is essential, however, is something much more important. The ground floor dwelling may contain the fire which, if properly stoked, provides a hot water supply in the dwellings upstairs. It is important that that hot water supply should continue to function.
If, as frequently happens, the source of the hot water supply is in one room of the house and provides the hot water for the dwellings on the upper floors, is that a hot water supply in the upper dwellings for the purpose of Clause 4? Obviously, it is not an effective hot water supply unless it continues to function. Its operational function is not something which can be controlled by the occupant of the dwelling in which the bathroom is situated, but is within the control of the occupant of a dwelling below.
Though these matters may seem abstruse to some hon. Members, they are fundamental human problems which confront a great many of my constituents and people living in London. Therefore, the practical problem is to ensure that the hot water supply is always functioning. If that is provided for, it is unreasonable to discourage landlords from providing other amenities by insisting that they should go to either the expense or the trouble of attempting to do something which is highly difficult, if not impossible, that is, providing separate

self-contained hot water supplies all over the house.

Mr. Anthony Fell: One agrees with the hon. Member that if a hot water supply which starts in the basement of a house is not kept up, there cannot be an effective hot water supply in the upper floors unless they have an independent hot water supply. One agrees with that and it seems unnecessary to state it. I should have thought that all this was covered. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] Perhaps not, although I should have thought it was covered by Clause 5 (2).

Mr. Fletcher: Obviously the hon. Member has not heard what I have been saying—

Mr. Gibson: He has not been here.

Mr. Fletcher: —or he would know that it is not covered. The hon. Member cannot be aware that local authorities, which will have to operate the terms of the Bill and apply them strictly and will want to apply them sympathetically, will be gravely handicapped unless some of these real problems are understood in the drafting of the Bill and are translated into reality. For these reasons, I hope that before we reach Report stage these practical problems will be considered and that, if necessary, the Bill will be very much amended so that these obscurities and uncertainties can be removed.

Mr. MacColl: It has been a very moving experience to participate in this great Legislature wrestling with these vital, important and fundamental issues that we have been discussing on the Clause. It is with great reluctance that I introduce a rather jarring note into the harmony of the proceedings. I find myself in disagreement with both the Government and my own party on the Clause. I do not know whether I am to regard myself as the only man in step or as the only righteous man in Sodom. Whichever it is, I am apparently a lonely figure.
9.30 p.m.
I think it is deplorable that the Government should be mandatorily directing local authorities to spend ratepayers' money without any discretion at all, without giving them any opportunity of exercising the judgment which the electors have given them to safeguard the funds


which they collect from the public. It is a fundamental principle of democracy that people who pay rates and elect people to supervise the rates are entitled to expect those representatives to have the right to decide how that money should be spent. If that is not a fundamental principle of representative democracy I do not know what is.
I am a very modest and humble man, and I am prepared to admit that I may conceivably be wrong, but it seems to me that the practice of the relationships between the central Government and local government in the past has universally been quite clear. The central Government pass certain laws and place certain responsibilities on local authorities. If local authorities habitually fail to carry out those provisions, those directions given to them, there are default Sections in the Acts as there are default Sections in the Housing Act enabling the central Government to hand over the powers to another authority or to place commissioners in charge, or to carry out some act of that sort. I know of no case where the local authority has been converted into a kind of corporate cash register to which anybody is entitled to come along and press the button, and out of the cash register comes £150 of public money to be spent on a private house.
I want to see—I am sure everybody wants to see—a water closet in every home. I recognise the political implications of this Clause as a slogan. We are about to face the heat of a General Election. We can already hear the Tory battle cry, "Every voter a Tory and every Tory in a water closet." I understand that those wise and prudent men who preside over the destinies of my party feel that it is dangerous to resist a cry of that sort. I recognise that, and therefore I recognise that I am in a hopeless minority. However, I feel that I should make my own position clear, that in this situation, with this frantic attempt to rush a Bill through for Election purposes, there is a very important constitutional principle which is being overridden.
There must be some tremendous reason why it is necessary to mandate a local authority to do this. We have been told by my hon. Friend the Member for Acton (Mr. Sparks), who has very great experience in these matters, that the local authorities have been doing this slowly. That may be true, I think some local autho-

rities have been very dubious whether it is the right thing to do with public money, whether it is a reasonable thing for public men to do. I am quite prepared to think that if they feel that they may be wrong. I am not arguing the merits of it. I am simply saying that it is a reasonable point of view for responsible public men to take, that it is wrong to put public money into other people's property. If public representatives take that line it is possible by means of circulars, by the means of persuasion through the democratic processes which are open, to persuade them that they are wrong.
However, I think there is another reason why the local authorities have not always worked the existing legislation as much as they might have, and that is because there has, I think, been a great deal of unwieldy bureaucracy in the right hon. Gentleman's own Department. I think that most people on local authorities have found cases where, owing to the hidebound administration of the right hon. Gentleman, if I may use that description, local authorities, even when they have wanted to do work of this sort, have not been able to do it.
I heard of a case only the other day in Kensington. It concerned a friend of mine. It was not connected with the fundamentals referred to in this Clause, but it was a case of prudent housing procedure. He got his proposals approved by the Kensington Borough Council. Because it was necessary for the right hon. Gentleman to exercise his discretion to waive a restriction the work was not allowed to be done, because the right hon. Gentleman would not exercise his discretion.
The right hon. Gentleman reserves that sort of discretion to stop local authorities using the powers which they already have and at the same time refuses to give them power in this respect to exercise their discretion. My hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, North-West (Mr. Janner), for example, is concerned with the saga of Mr. Brady. Mr. Brady can go along to any housing authority in the country and, providing that a house comes up to the minimum standards of the Housing Act, the local authority has no discretion to say, "We will not touch it with a barge-pole. We are not satisfied that the house will be properly used." Mr. Brady has the power to say to the local authority, "You must cough up public money with no questions asked."
My hon. Friend the Member for Dunbartonshire, West (Mr. Steele) produced yesterday an embryo Mr. Brady, a gentleman who is growing up aspiring to the stature of Mr. Brady. In the same way, that gentleman will be able to go to his local authority and, provided that the letter of the law is fulfilled, an elected public authority will have no discretion left to it at all as to what it should do with public money. That is a shocking state of affairs for us to have got into. I say with regret that it is unfortunate that the House of Commons, unanimously and without a word, has sanctioned the incursion of this entirely new principle into local government legislation. It is something that we shall rue very much in future.
I warn hon. Members opposite that it is a principle which will not be lost on my right hon. and hon. Friends after the next General Election, because it will be a splendid principle and a splendid precedent to quote—that it is right to direct the local authority on how to carry out public duties placed upon it by the legislature. This will not be lost on my hon. Friends. It will be a precedent which hon. Members opposite will live to regret bitterly.

Mr. Gibson: There is a very unfortunate aspect of the housing problem which is in no way touched upon in the Bill. By definition, the Bill will deal only with houses which have been erected before 1919. That means that the youngest of them is at least forty years old, and there are hundreds of thousands of them in London alone which are seventy, eighty, ninety years old and more. A very large proportion of these houses suffer from severe rising damp. There is nothing in the Bill to encourage landlords to cure that defect.
I am not surprised, because the Rent Act was carefully framed so that a tenant could not obtain a certificate of disrepair by reporting rising damp. Everyone who has visited these houses knows that they were built without damp courses, because in most cases there were no regulations in those days requiring them to be provided. There is hardly anything that one can do now to stop the rising damp completely, but it might be possible to hold it back a little.
My hon. Friend the Member for Widnes (Mr. MacColl) has said that we shall pour large sums of public money into these pre-1919 houses. In that event, I should have thought that one of the things which we should have tried to do was to make the houses more habitable by dealing with this trouble of rising damp in property where, frequently, the walls are damp from the basement to the top floor, with paper and distemper pealing off. Apparently that is not thought of in the standard amenity conditions which have to be applied under this Bill.

Sir James Duncan: Is not that kind of thing covered by Clause 5 (2)?

Mr. Gibson: I wish it were. I have tried to get houses in my constituency condemned as unfit to live in where all the ground floor walls were very damp through rising dampness, and the local medical officer has told me that it is impossible to condemn them as unfit to live in and that there is nothing he can do.

Sir J. Duncan: Clause 5 (2) states that the houses must last for fifteen years, but, according to the hon. Gentleman, at the end of fifteen years they will have rotted away.

Mr. Gibson: That is the point. As the law stands we cannot condemn those houses, yet the Government are to allow owners to put in amenities to improve them slightly, perhaps by putting in a bathroom which may or may not have hot water in it—and, indeed, does not necessarily have cold water either—or a water closet inside or outside the dwelling. Or they can provide what are called satisfactory facilities for storing food. I would like to ask what that means. I remember that on one occasion, when, in Committee upstairs, we were defining what were satisfactory storage facilities for food, we took many hours to reach a decision. It is clear to me that a large number of the houses which the Bill will affect, and at which it is aimed, are suffering from severe dampness which makes them very uncomfortable, and, from the point of view of health, dangerous to live in, yet the owners are not to be encouraged to get rid of that dampness.
My other point is concerned with subsection (2), which states:
The Minister may by order vary the class of amenities which are the standard amenities for the purposes of this Part of this Act.
What does that mean? If it means that the Minister may add to the list of amenities, I am happy, but I am not sure. Can we have an assurance that the following will not happen: that by order the Minister can reduce the number of amenities which this Bill says the owner can give and, as a result, receive public money to the extent at any rate of half of the £150? The Committee and the country are entitled to know this.
I doubt whether the Bill will do very much to improve housing conditions in the country generally, but if it will I wish it luck. What I am annoyed about, and what I think the country will be annoyed about, is that we shall give considerable sums of money, if the Bill works at all, to owners who ought to have done their duty long before this by putting such amenities into the houses for which they are drawing rents, and for which they have recently been able to double and sometimes treble the rents they have drawn.

Mr. Reynolds: There are one or two points to which I want to refer. One can safely say that it is one of the most ambiguously worded Clauses one has ever seen, and that in years to come it will cause untold trouble to a large number of local authorities who will have to look at the plans and proposals they receive and will have to try to reach some conclusion as to whether or not they come within the ambit of the Clause, knowing full well that if they refuse the proposals, they are liable to be hauled before the courts by the proposers in an attempt to reverse the decision.
I want to refer particularly to one condition which will make it almost impossible for much work to be done in my constituency under this Clause. I am referring to paragraph (a) which reads:
a fixed bath or shower in a bathroom …
That is fairly clear except that it does not say whether there is to be a water supply to the fixed bath, though apparently it is to be in the bathroom. This legislation will make it difficult in a large number of places for advantage to be taken of the proposals in the Clause.
9.45 p.m.
In many parts of London, particularly in my constituency and other parts of the Borough of Islington there are old houses which have not sufficient accommodation to enable one to take a room and decide to use it as a bathroom. I cannot understand why in this legislation, when the Minister would have us believe that this is to be a lower standard of improvement grant than we have previously had, the standard in respect of baths is being made higher. The 1949 Housing Act laid down that in order to secure an improvement grant under that Measure there must be provided a fixed bath preferably in a separate room. In spite of the very high standard called for by the 1949 Act, a separate bathroom was not insisted upon. Now that we are reducing the standard in order to ensure that more work shall be done we are apparently to insist upon a separate bathroom. In a large number of cases it will be impossible to comply with this requirement.
On the other hand, it may well be possible to fix a bath with a hot water supply in a scullery, which is better than not having a fixed bath. In a number of older houses which have large bedrooms it might be possible to have a modern shower cabinet in a bedroom corner. While I agree with the Minister that it is better to have a bath or shower in a separate room if possible, a bath in a scullery or a shower cabinet in another room is better than not having any bath or shower in the house.
I hope the Minister will ensure that local authorities will not be forced to make a grant for the installation of a hot water system unless the water is heated by some appliance which will be recognised under the various clean air regulations that local authorities wish to make. We do not wish to see local authorities providing public money for the installation of boilers and then a few years later having to pay more public money to convert the boilers to comply with the clean air regulations.

Mr. Cole: I commend my right hon. Friend for the very earnest effort that he has made in connection with these improvement grants. There are some innovations in the Clause, and I think they will help towards what we want to see,


which is the improvement of many houses which but for these grants would not be properly or fully occupied. We should give the Clause our support.
The hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Reynolds) said that a local council would have to look at an application to see whether it complied with the requirements stated at the beginning of Clause 4. The hon. Member for Widnes (Mr. MacColl) spoke as though the local authority would have no discretion whatever and would, as it were, merely have to put a rubber stamp on an application. The two arguments are mutually contradictory. I would call the attention of hon. Members, particularly hon. Members opposite, to the very important words towards the end of subsection (1), where it is stated that the application must be made—that is obvious—and that it must be approved by the local authority. In the last half hour, it has constantly been said that local authorities will have no say in whether approval should be given.

Mr. MacColl: We must not anticipate the next Clause, but the hon. Member will find in Clauses 5 (4) that if a local authority disapproves of an application, it must give its reasons in writing. It will thus be subject to a writ of mandamus, or something like that, if it refuses an application.

Mr. Cole: If the reasons for disapproving an application were good enough, the local authority would win its case. I was thinking that there would be an appeal to the Minister, and I cannot see the Minister taking a view different from that of the local authority if its reasons were sound.
We must attach sufficient importance to the approval of a local authority. If an applicant does not think that his case is good enough, if he is turned down by the local authority after having made an application, he will be the last person in the world to start a court action on something which he knows to have a bad foundation. I commend the Clause since I think that it will help towards the object which we all have in mind.

Mr. A. Evans: I hope that I may be allowed to offer some solace to my hon. Friend the Member for Widnes (Mr. MacColl) for the lonely path which he

has taken on the Clause. The Minister has laid down that a local authority shall do certain things. That might have been reasonable if the Minister had carefully considered those things, but it is evident that the details have not been carefully studied.
Local government officials have informed me that they find it difficult to see how these provisions will operate in practice. The Minister has denied them the necessary discretion. I hope that in future he will consult very closely with local government officers who have to operate provisions of this kind before he inserts mandatory requirements in a Bill. He would have done well to have consulted local government officials as closely as he consulted building societies on the earlier provisions of the Bill. He would have received practical advice and the Clause would have been more workmanlike as a result.
I hope that he will bear in mind the plea of my hon. Friend the Member for Widnes and remember that any shackling of local authorities is to be deplored and that local authorities must be allowed full discretion in their public duties.

Mr. H. Brooke: The Government are anxious to work as closely as possible with local authorities in furthering a common aim. The Government's approach to the problem is perfectly simple. It is that we must find ways and means of stimulating the progress of the improvement work on older houses.
In 1949 certain provisions relating to improvement and conversion grants were put on the Statute Book, but they were so unsuccessful that after five years no more than about 10,000 grants in all had been made. When he held my present office, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister piloted through the House the 1954 Measure, which had a most valuable effect in stimulating the making of these improvements. As compared with 10,000 grants in five years under the Labour Government's legislation, under the 1954 legislation grants have been running at an average rate of between 30,000 and 40,000 a year. That is an immense improvement, but it is not enough.
The Government are bringing forward these fresh provisions to try to raise that figure substantially. The Opposition


seem to be divided in their view. The hon. Member for Widnes (Mr. MacColl) is, as he said, out on a limb, by himself. He does not seem concerned that improvement is not going forward as fast as it should in the Government's view. We are concerned about it and we intend to do something about it.

Mr. MacColl: The right hon. Gentleman should not have said that. I made it quite clear that I was in favour of the full use of these powers. What I object to is that the right hon. Gentleman, in a state of election panic, is cutting across the proper constitutional relations between central and local government.

Mr. Brooke: I know that the hon. Member can think of nothing except the results of the election, but hon. Members on this side of the Committee think about the good of the people.

Mr. A. Evans: On a point of order. The right hon. Gentleman appeared to me to be about to embark upon an election speech. He said that the Government were concerned with the good of the people. Would it be in order for the right hon. Gentleman to pursue that election speech?

The Deputy-Chairman (Sir Gordon Touche): I must hear the right hon. Gentleman's speech before I can object to what he is saying.

Mr. Brooke: Despite the delay which the Opposition are seeking to cause, we are trying to get upon the Statute Book a Clause which is designed to improve the housing conditions of the people. The Opposition must make up their minds about this matter. Their Amendments have sought to tighten the conditions, and in view of some of the speeches made by the hon. Member for Islington, East (Mr. A. Evans), and others, I am beginning to wonder whether we were right to accept the Opposition Amendment to insert the words:
for the exclusive use of its occupants".
Immediately we accepted it the hon. Member for Islington, East explained that if one insisted upon a provision of that kind in his constituency it was liable to hold up the work on these improvements. Nevertheless, I believe that it was right to accept the Amendment, and I also think that we ought to insist that all the standard amenities should be

provided before a grant for any of them is made. That is an essential part of the task of improving houses.
The hon. Member for Clapham (Mr. Gibson) asked what we meant by varying the class of amenities. From the point of view of the Government, any variation would be limited to extending the list. I do not know whether the hon. Member had in mind that a Labour Government might somewhat reduce the list of standard amenities which were considered necessary.
I can certainly say that any wise owner would wish to instal a hot water system which was not going to produce a smoky atmosphere, because I trust that his borough, and other boroughs in the big cities, are going ahead with the introduction of smoke-controlled areas. If they do so an owner will be imposing expenditure upon himself as well as upon the local authority if he has subsequently to alter the hot water system to make it smokeless.
Having sought to get the Government to agree to a restrictive Amendment to the Clause, which would have prevented the standard grant being made unless all the dwellings in a particular house were being improved at the same time, the hon. Member then asked whether we could not loosen up in another direction, and give a standard grant even though the shower was not in a separate room. We must make up our minds one way or the other, and if we are to have this system of a standard grant it seams to me that we should impose certain conditions, and make sure that for all the dwellings in the house in which the standard amenities are being put the result will be a satisfactory one.
10.0 p.m.
I deny absolutely the allegation against my Department, made by the hon. Member for Widnes (Mr. MacColl), that by bureaucracy and red tape we have sought to hold up local authorities who have been seeking to give improvement grants. On the contrary, our policy is to treat these cases on their merits. But it is necessary that the conditions laid down in the Statute should be observed. If the hon. Gentleman for Islington, North (Mr. Reynolds) thinks that any of these conditions for the standard grant are too restrictive, let me remind him that it will still be open to anybody to continue to apply for the old type of improvement


grant which will not be so tightly bound round by conditions. There is no difficulty about that.
Here, we are seeking to add another facility in such a way that it is likely to be used, and that there will not be any unreasonable hold-up in the making of grants. If this Clause fulfils my hopes and expectations, we shall see that figure of 35,000 a year for old improvement grants rise rapidly to a considerably higher figure.

Mr. Mitchison: The right hon. Gentleman has only himself to thank for provoking me into doing what I did not intend to do, into saying a word or two more at the end of this discussion. I have never heard a larger collection of unbelievable inexactitudes in any one speech. I think that the "plum" of the moment was when the right hon. Gentleman laid his hand on his heart—if any—and declared that all he cared for was the good of the people. That a Minister and a Government who have been responsible successively for the Rent Act and for the failure of the general need housing subsidy, and then for the introduction of the general grant, should seriously suppose that they have done anything whatever for the good of the people in the matter of housing, passes the belief of the ordinary man. Let me go one stage further—

The Deputy-Chairman: Order. I hope that the hon. and learned Gentleman will not pursue this too far, because he is going far beyond the terms of the Clause.

Mr. Mitchison: I was led there, Sir Gordon, by having to reply to the right hon. Gentleman. I have to answer what he said.
Returning strictly to the Clause, I say this about it. The practical reason for it is perfectly clear. The right hon. Gentleman said that during a period of about nine years, seven of which—or rather more—have been under Tory Governments, not sufficient use has been made of improvement grants and the Acts providing for assistance in the purchase of houses. That is true, and we all know who is responsible. It is, of course, the Tory-controlled councils who have failed to operate the improvements grants and to give assistance in the purchase and conversion of houses to people who really needed it.
Because we recognise that difficulty, and the existence of the hardship which that difficulty has caused, we have reluctantly accepted the principle that it is time something was done about it. It is not the Labour-controlled councils who have been slow in these matters. They have operated the statutory provisions which they could operate, and so far as they are concerned there is no need for this Clause. It is to help the Government with their own supporters that we do not oppose the Clause.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 5.—(APPROVAL OF APPLICATIONS FOR STANDARD GRANT.)

Mr. Mitchison: I beg to move, in page 4, line 37, to leave out "and (3)" and to insert "(3) and (4)".
We now come to a series of Amendments all directed to what under Clause 5, a local authority can treat as a ground for refusing a standard grant. They all seem to me to raise matters of considerable importance. I can deal with the first one very shortly in view of what has been said in earlier debates.
The right hon. Gentleman explained to us at one stage that there were many houses into which it was physically impossible to introduce a bathroom. There is no need for me to develop this point. Nobody will force the local authorities to do that which is impossible. Suppose a man asks for a grant and produces a specification of the works required. He believes that a bath can be put in. What power has the local authority to refuse his application, provided he can bring a specification and he says that at the end of the time the amenities will be provided? I see no power for a local authority to do what it ought to do—decide for itself that it is not practicable to put in the standard amenities.
There may be cases where the introduction of amenities, although desirable on the face of things, would not improve the dwelling. One of these cases would be the rather small house occupied by a rather large family. It would be physically possible to introduce a bathroom but only at the cost of ruining the sleeping accommodation. Somebody has to decide what is reasonably practicable


and likely to improve the dwelling. Unless this decision is to be left entirely within the discretion of the applicant, the only person who can do it is the local authority.
The Amendment I have moved is related to another Amendment standing in my name, in page 4, line 38, at the end to insert:
(2) The local authority must be satisfied that it is reasonably practicable to carry out the works specified in the application and thereby to improve the dwelling.

Mr. Bevins: The Amendment proposed to the Clause is to insert that the local authority has to
be satisfied that it is reasonably practicable to carry out the works specified in the application and thereby to improve the dwelling.
Clause 4 (1) says that the application has to be approved by the local authority before the works are begun and that the works are to be executed to the satisfaction of the authority. It would be impossible to carry out the works to the satisfaction of the local authority if it were not reasonably practicable to do them at all.
There is the further consideration implicit in all this that if the Government were to accept the Amendment it would open ground for argument between the applicant and the local authority. There could be different views as to what is reasonably practicable in any set of circumstances. That might lead a local authority which did not want to give grants to avoid doing so in certain cases. If there were a dispute, the local authority would have the last word.

The view of my right hon. Friend is that the words in the first subsection are sufficient to ensure that the work is carried out to the satisfaction of the local authority.

Mr. Mitchison: If ordinary words in this Bill have their ordinary meanings, the provision about work being executed to the satisfaction of the authority clearly refer to the way in which the work is done by the builder and that is wholly and obviously inappropriate to the purpose we have in mind. I sympathise with the hon. Gentleman. If he wants to define a kitchen sink, he may find it a little difficult to understand plain English—but that is as may be.
The second point is very short. We have just noticed that the hon. Gentleman has said, on behalf of the Government, that if there is to be a dispute between the applicant and the local authority as to what is reasonably practicable, the applicant, and the applicant alone, must decide it. I have never heard such nonsense, if I may use the word, from a Ministry which is supposed to be the Ministry of Local Government as well as the Ministry of Housing. Apparently, the Government desire to force local authorities to do what is not reasonably practicable, and to do things that will not really improve the house at all. I would advise my hon. Friends to divide on this Amendment.

Question put, That "and (3)" stand part of the Clause:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 158. Noes 107.

Division No. 36.]
AYES
[10.12 p.m.


Agnew, Sir Peter
Browne, J. Nixon (Craigton)
Fisher, Nigel


Aitken, W. T.
Bryan, P.
Gammans, Lady


Alport, C. J. M.
Burden, F. F. A.
Garner-Evans, E. H.


Amory, Rt. Hn. Heathcoat (Tiverton)
Carr, Robert
Glover, D.


Atbuthnot, John
Channon, P.
Glyn, Col. Richard H.


Armstrong, C. W.
Chlchester-Clark, R.
Goodhart, Philip


Ashton, H.
Clarke, Brig. Terence (Portsmth, W.)
Graham, Sir Fergus


Baldwin, Sir Archer
Cole, Norman
Green, A.


Barber, Anthony
Conant, Maj. Sir Roger
Gresham Cooke, R.


Barter, John
Cooper, A. E.
Grimond, J.


Baxter, Sir Beverley
Cooper-Key, E. M.
Grimston, Hon. John (St. Albans)


Bell, Philip (Bolton, C.)
Craddock, Beresford (Spelthorne)
Harris, Reader (Heston)


Bevins, J. R (Toxteth)
Crosthwaite-Eyre, Col. O. E.
Harrison, Col. J. H. (Eye)


Bidgood, J. C.
Dance, J. C. G.
Heald, Rt. Hon. Sir Lionel


Biggs-Davison, J. A.
Davidson, Viscountess
Henderson, John (Cathcart)


Bingham, R. M.
Deedes, W. F.
Hill, Rt. Hon. Charles (Luton)


Black, Sir Cyril
Digby, Simon Wingfield
Hill, Mrs. E. (Wythenshawe)


Body, R. F.
Dodds-Parker, A. D.
Hill, John (S. Norfolk)


Bossom, Sir Alfred
Donaldson, Cmdr. C. E. McA.
Hirst, Geoffrey


Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hon. J. A.
du Cann, E. D. L.
Hobson, John (Warwick &amp; Leam'gt'n)


Boyle, Sir Edward
Elliott, R. W. (Ne' castle upon Tyne, N.)
Holland-Martin, C. J.


Braine, B. R.
Errington, Sir Eric
Hope, Lord John


Braithwaite, Sir Albert (Harrow, W.)
Farey-Jones, F. W.
Hornby, R. P.


Bromley-Davenport, Lt.-Col. W. H.
Fell, A.
Howard, Gerald (Cambridgeshire)


Brooke, Rt. Hon. Henry
Finlay, Graeme
Hughes-Young, M. H. C.




Hutchison, Michael Clark(E'b'gh, S.)
Markham, Major Sir Frank
Speir, R. M.


Hutchison, Sir Ian Clark (E 'b' gh, W.)
Marlowe, A. A. H.
Steward, Harold (Stockport, S.)


Hutchison, Sir James (Scotstoun)
Marshall, Douglas
Storey, S.


Iremonger, T. L.
Mathew, R.
Summers, Sir Spencer


Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)
Mawby, R. L.
Sumner, W. D. M- (Orpington)


Jenkins, Robert (Dulwich)
Maydon, Lt.-Comdr, S. L. C.
Temple, John M.


Jennings, J. C. (Burton)
Medlicott, Sir Frank
Thomas, P. J. M. (Conway)


Johnson, Dr. Donald (Carlisle)
Mott-Radclyffe, Sir Charles
Thompson, R. (Croydon, S.)


Johnson, Eric (Blackley)
Nabarro, G. D. N.
Tilney, John (Wavertree)


Joseph, Sir Keith
Nairn, D. L. S.
Turton, Rt. Hon. R. H.


Kerr, Sir Hamilton
Noble, Michael (Argyll)
Vickers, Miss Joan


Kershaw, J. A,
Nugent, G. R. H.
Vosper, Rt. Hon. D. F.


Kirk, P. M.
Page, R. G.
Wade, D. W.


Lambton, Viscount
Panned, N. A. (Kirkdale)
Wakefield, Edward (Derbyshire, W.)


Leavey, J. A.
Partridge, E.
Wakefield, Sir Wavell (St. M'lebone)


Legge-Bourke, Maj. E. A. H.
Peel, W. J.
Wall, Patrick


Legh, Hon. Peter (Petersfield)
Pickthorn, Sir Kenneth
Ward, Rt. Hon. G. R. (Worcester)


Lindsay, Hon. James (Devon, N.)
Pitt, Miss E. M.
Ward, Dame Irene (Tynemouth)


Linstead, Sir H. N.
Pott, H. P.
Webster, David


Lloyd, Maj. Sir Guy (Renfrew, E.)
Powell, J. Enoch
Whitelaw, W. S. I.


Longden, Gilbert
Price, David (Eastleigh)
Williams, Paul (Sunderland, S.)


Loveys, Walter H.
Rawlinson, Peter
Williams, R. Dudley (Exeter)


Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh
Redmayne, M.
Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)


Macdonald, Sir Peter
Roberts, Sir Peter (Heeley)
Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick


Maclean, Sir Fitzroy (Landcaster)
Robinson, Sir Roland (Blackpool, S.)
Woollam, John Victor


Macmillan, Rt. Hn. Harold (Bromley)
Roper, Sir Harold



Macmillan, Maurice (Halifax)
Sharpies, R. C.
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Macpherson, Niall (Dumfries)
Shepherd, William
Mr. Brooman-Wbite and


Maddan, Martin
Spearman, Sir Alexander
Mr. Gibson-Watt.




NOES


Abse, Leo
Grey, C. F.
Paget, R. T.


Ainsley, J. W.
Griffiths, Rt. Hon. James (Llanelly)
Parker, J.


Allen, Arthur (Bosworth)
Hannan, W.
Pentland, N.


Allen, Scholefield (Crewe)
Hayman, F. H.
Price, J. T. (Westhoughton,)


Awbery, S. S.
Henderson, Rt. Hon. A. (Rwly Regis)
Probert, A. R.


Benn, Hn. Wedgwood (Bristol, S. E.)
Herbison, Miss M.
Pursey, Cmdr, H.


Benson, Sir George
Hoy, J. H.
Reynolds, G. W.


Blackburn, F.
Hughes, Cledwyn (Anglesey)
Robinson, Kenneth (St. Pancras, N.)


Blyton, W. R.
Hughes, Emrys (S. Ayrshire)
Rogers, George (Kensington, N.)


Bottomley, Rt. Hon. A. G.
Hughes, Hector (Aberdeen, N.)
Ross, William


Bowden, H. W. (Leicester, S.W.)
Hunter, A. E.
Short, E. W.


Brockway, A. F.
Hynd, H. (Accrington)
Silverman, Julius (Aston)


Broughton, Dr. A. D. D.
Hynd, J. B. (Attercliffe)
Silverman, Sydney (Nelson)


Brown, Thomas (Ince)
Janner, B.
Skeffington, A. M.


Champion, A. J.
Jay, Rt. Hon. D. P. T.
Slater, J. (Sedgefield)


Chetwynd, G. R.
Jeger, Mrs. Lena (Holbn &amp; St. Pncs, S.)
Smith, Ellis (Stoke, S.)


Cliffe, Michael
Johnson, James (Rugby)
Sorensen, R. W.


Collick, P. H. (Birkenhead)
Jones, Jack (Rotherham)
Sparks, J. A.


Corbet, Mrs. Freda
Jones, J. Idwal (Wrexham)
Spriggs, Leslie


Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)
Jones, T. W. (Merioneth)
Stonehouse, John


Grossman, R. H. S.
Lindgren, G. S.
Stones, W. (Consett)


Davies, Harold (Leek)
Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson
Swingler, S. T.


Davies, Stephen (Merthyr)
McAlister, Mrs. Mary
Taylor, Bernard (Mansfield)


Dear, G.
McCann, J.
Taylor, John (West Lothian)


de Freitas, Geoffrey
MacColl, J. E.
Thomson, George (Dundee, E.)


Delargy, H. J.
McKay, John (Wallsend)
Thornton, E.


Dugdale, Rt. Hn. John (W. Brmwch)
Mallalieu, E. L. (Brigg)
Ungoed-Thomas, Sir Lynn


Ede, Rt. Hon. J. C.
Mann, Mrs. Jean
White, Mrs. Eirene (E. Flint)


Edwards, Robert (Bilston)
Mikardo, Ian
Williams, W. R. (Openshaw)


Evans, Albert (Islington, S.W.)
Mitchison, G. R.
Winterbottom, Richard


Fitch, A. E. (Wigan)
Moody, A. S.
Woodburn, Rt. Hon. A.


Fletcher, Eric
Noel-Baker, Francis (Swindon)
Woof, R. E.


Foot, D. M.
Noel-Baker, Rt. Hon. P. (Derby, S.)
Zilliacus, K.


Fraser, Thomas (Hamilton)
Oliver, G. H.



George, Lady Megan Lloyd (Car'then)
Oswald, T.
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Gibson, C. W.
Owen, W. J.
Mr. Wilkins and Mr. Simmons.


Grenfell, Rt. Hon. D. R.
Padley, W. E.

Mr. Mitchison: I beg to move, in page 4, line 38, at the end to insert:
(2) The local authority must be satisfied that the occupier of the dwelling, if he is not the applicant, has given his consent in writing to the application.
The applicant must be either the owner of the freehold of the house or, at any rate, a long lease holder. It does not follow that he is the occupant of the house. He may be a tenant, or there may be a letting under an arrangement that does not amount to a full lease. The Amendment simply provides that the man in the house must give his consent to the application for improvements, and the intention of it is that a tenant shall not have a bath forced on him if he does not want it.
I do not think there will be many cases where a tenant will object, but there may be a considerable disturbance of his arrangements for the time being at a time when he does not want them disturbed, or, on the other hand, a change in the other accommodation in the house to which he does not agree, may be necessary.
I am very interested in the fate of the Amendment. We have heard a lot about Tory freedom. We now want to see how much Tory freedom the tenant will have. If the landlord, the local authority and the Government between them can foist on him a bath, wash-basin, or kitchen sink which he does not want, there may be an improvement in the house, but what will have happened to Tory freedom? Probably it will have gone down the water closet.
I am a little tired of the refusal that we have had time after time to make the tenant's consent necessary in these cases. I repeat that I cannot believe that there will often be any trouble about it. In 999 cases out of 1,000 the tenant will be only too glad to have such conveniences put in his house, but it is right that in the thousandth case where his opinion differs from that of the landlord and he does not want the improvements he should be allowed to refuse.

Mr. Barnett Janner: I support the Amendment, although I am not entirely in agreement with my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) in

one respect. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] Hon. Members opposite need not rejoice too soon. My hon. and learned Friend said that there would be only one tenant in a thousand who would not want the improvements. I do not agree with him. I believe that his case is stronger than that.
My hon. Friend the Member for Widnes (Mr. MacColl) referred to the unhappy experience about the Brady incidents. All sorts of subterfuges are practised by landlords of that type to make it difficult for the tenant, or to get the tenant out, and I am concerned that no loophole should be left in any fresh legislation which will add to the possibilities that exist already.
The Amendment proposes that the local authority shall do something when an improvement is applied for, irrespective of whether the local authority considers that that improvement will be helpful to the tenant. It is a mandatory injunction upon the local authority. Obviously, on the face of it, the making of an improvement of this nature would be useful, but, on the other hand, as my hon. and learned Friend said, it may very well be that a tenant may object to his home being upset for a considerable period, or the landlord may utilise the possibility of the improvement to make it so uncomfortable for the tenant as possibly even to drive him out of the dwelling in which he is living.

Mr. Hector Hughes: As has happened.

Mr. Janner: As has happened. It happened with regard to the improvements. The place was ripped up when the tenants were being provided with fresh facilities under previous Acts. This is well known, possibly, to hon. Members on both sides.
In the circumstances, we must be careful about closing up these loopholes. There is no real reason why a tenant should not be consulted. It is important that he should be consulted. Perhaps other wording might be used—for example, that he shall not unreasonably withhold his consent or something of that nature. I certainly think, however, that the principle that the tenant should be consulted and brought in in the first


instance so that it is not an ex parte matter for the landlord, is something which the Minister should take into account.
It is not a severe penalty to impose upon anybody, because if my hon. and learned Friend is right, it will apply in only one case out of 1,000. If I am right, obviously it is necessary to have the tenant protected. It does not matter which way one looks at it. This is a reasonable request. I hope that, in view of the tragic circumstances which have arisen in consequence of the removal of the restrictions, in view of the protection to tenants and in view of the fact that for many years, although the law imposed upon the landlord an obligation to do repairs which would have meant that some of these improvements might not have been necessary, the law was not complied with, the Minister will realise that there is no reason to believe that landlords of that type will not seek some kind of loophole to allow them further to pester the tenant and possibly even make it so uncomfortable for the tenant to remain that he will want to leave, or will leave, if this provision far which we ask is not inserted. This is not a party matter. It is a matter in which we all should realise that, if only as a precaution, this step should be taken and the concession should be made.

Mr. Bevins: I want to help the Committee by saying at once that my right hon. Friend would like to consider the import of the Amendment and we shall, of course, have regard to what has been said from the other side of 'the Committee. In theory, the Amendment seems to be unnecessary, because standard grant is not paid until the work of improvement has been done. Ordinarily—I stress "ordinarily"—the work cannot be done if the tenant—

Mr. Janner: I appreciate the manner in which the hon. Gentleman is dealing with the matter, but I want him to realise that an additional rental can be imposed upon the tenant when this is done in accordance with Clause 12.

Mr. Bevins: I quite agree. All I was saying was that in theory the Amendment is not necessary, because the work cannot be done without the tenant's consent in the sense that there must be access to the house, with the tenant's consent, before

the work can be started. Having said that, however, I agree that experience with the improvement grant scheme has shown that tenants are not always clearly aware of their rights and sometimes allow work to be done without making specific protest.
Local authorities have been asked by circular from my Department to ensure that, before an improvement grant for a tenanted house is given, the tenant's agreement to the work has first been received.
10.30 p.m.
The only comment I should like to make to the hon. and learned Gentleman on the form of his Amendment is that it seems to us to be perhaps a little too rigid, because the local authority may conceivably give the grant and then find that there is a liability to surcharge because the tenant has not given his consent in writing. The local authority might, in very exceptional circumstances, be under the impression through an oversight that that consent had been given. That is a technical difficulty, but, as I say, my right hon. Friend would like to have an opportunity of considering the principle of the Amendment and, perhaps, producing a suitable form of words at the next stage of the Bill.

Mr. Mitchison: I would make two comments, both of them short. The first is this. The reason we put "consent in writing" in the draft was that, of course, if we do get that it removes any dispute as to what happened. It appeared to us that the form of consent could very easily be put on the application form and so simplify the whole matter which the hon. Gentleman will be considering.
The second is a general observation I make to the hon. Gentleman and his right hon. Friend in the hope of persuading them that if anything of this sort is refused, then, subject, of course, to regulations—but they have no force in themselves—or advice, the only person who will have any freedom whatever to act in the matter will the applicant who is the owner—the landlord in the case we are considering. I put it to the hon. Gentleman and his right hon. Friend that would confirm all our worst suspicions.
In view of the undertaking which has been given to us, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Mr. Mitchison: I beg to move, in page 4, line 40, at the end to insert:
not be overcrowded (within the meaning of section seventy-seven of the Housing Act, 1957, which defines overcrowding) and will".
I shall move the Amendment shortly and I hope successfully. This is an Amendment to ensure that the immediate result of carrying out the works is not overcrowding. It is so worded—I hope, correctly—as not to import any more than that; not to carry any obligation in the matter into the future.
There are, of course, general provisions and general duties against overcrowding, but the local authority may find itself in the position that it is practicable to carry out the works, that an application has been made for them, that the conditions already in the Clause are fulfilled, and yet that the result is bound to be and would be actual overcrowding in the statutory sense. It will have no power to deal with the overcrowding because the overcrowding has not yet happened. I cannot believe that it is the intention of the Government that that contingency and that result should be allowed, and I hope, therefore, that the Amendment will be accepted.

Mr. H. Brooke: There is nothing in the Bill which impairs in any way existing powers to deal with overcrowding. Of course, as I am sure the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) realises, overcrowding is no part of the physical condition of the house which we are otherwise dealing with here. The local authority has got to be satisfied, for example, that the house will have a life of fifteen years. That is concerned with its physical condition. The improvements are concerned with its physical condition. Overcrowding can be remedied at any time by the excess number of people in the house, whether one or more, moving out of it and—

Mr. A. Evans: Where are they to go?

Mr. Brooke: Yes, by moving out. Under existing powers of the local authority—

Mr. Reynolds: Where are they to go? The local authorities are completely unable to use those powers, because there is nowhere to put people. A large number of families are living in grossly overcrowded conditions at the moment, and the local authorities would like to use

their powers to move them, but have nowhere to put them. The Amendment is to stop overcrowding from occurring.

Mr. Brooke: The hon. Member will, of course, grant that many local authorities are able to use these powers now that two million houses have been built in the last seven years. It must not be thought that there is any diminution here in the powers of the local authorities to deal with overcrowding. But it would be quite wrong to make it a condition of a standard grant that the house shall not be overcrowded when the work is done. Nobody can tell that. The hon. and learned Member for Kettering himself said that this was a contingent element and that we must leave it to local authorities, under their existing powers, to deal with overcrowding. Nothing in the Bill will make for worse overcrowding. All these standard improvements are bound to make conditions better, but we cannot establish by means of the Amendment a link between the Bill and existing powers of local authorities to remedy overcrowding.

Mr. MacColl: I should like to explore with the right hon. Gentleman the point which he is making. If the landlord does one of these particular works, which means that a room which has been used for habitation ceases to be available for that purpose and the local authority, without the Amendment, cannot stop it and it causes overcrowding, who has committed the offence? The tenant, clearly, has not committed the offence, because he has not caused or permitted the house to be overcrowded. He has just sat there and watched the change being made. Has the landlord caused or permitted the house to be overcrowded if he has simply acted at the behest of the Minister and has improved the property by adding an amenity to it?
This is not a frill. It goes to the root of the whole question as to whether or not, in doing the operation, one causes the overcrowding. Suppose that there is overcrowding. Under the terms of Section 78 of the Housing Act, the landlord shall be deemed to have caused it if, after notice in writing that a house is overcrowded, he has not taken steps to get rid of the tenant. In other words, he must get rid of the tenant, otherwise he is liable to prosecution.
To say that the local authorities can easily be left to deal with overcrowding may be true in Hampstead, but I do not know how it can be true in any other part of the country. It chills me to the marrow to think that the Minister lives in this cloud-cuckoo-land. Local authorities have ceased to build for general needs. They cannot obtain subsidies for that purpose and the position now is that a local authority can find a house for somebody who is overcrowded only if it happens to have a vacancy. It cannot build a new house, because it cannot obtain a subsidy.
It is shocking to think that at this time of night we are faced with a Minister who honestly believes—and the right hon. Gentleman's honesty is beyond question —that it is quite easy and that all the local authority has to do is to find a house for somebody whose place is overcrowded because a bedroom has been turned into a bathroom. That is the environment in which the right hon. Gentleman lives. It is frightening that somebody like that is responsible for the lives of millions of people who have to live under modern conditions in our cities. It is terrifying. I urge the right hon. Gentleman to look at this matter again before the Report stage and to get the facts right.

Mr. Mitchison: The right hon. Gentleman is putting forward the most monstrous suggestions. Overcrowding is a public ill. There is provision in the Housing Acts to abate it and to oblige local authorities to take all possible action towards that end, and that is because it is a public ill. What the right hon. Gentleman is solemnly proposing is that public money should be paid to a landlord to assist him to do something which he, the local authority and everybody knows will result in overcrowding. What is the logic or sense in the Government?
I look at this piece of Tory legislation having regard to one thing and one thing only—who will benefit in the long run? The answer in this respect is as clear as daylight. The landlord is equipped with the means of promoting overcrowding if he so wishes. Because the tenant's consent is not required, the landlord is

enabled to use the provisions of the Bill to procure overcrowding and get the tenant evicted by the local authority.
It is absolutely monstrous that if the right hon. Gentleman and his supporters have any regard whatever to the abatement of overcrowding they should suppose that the Amendment is unnecessary. If there is no overcrowding at the moment and the application comes in, there is nothing about which the local authority can take action. It is compelled to accept an application to promote the very thing which it is its social and stautory duty to abate as soon as it happens. Of all monstrous antisocial absurdities, the refusal of the Amendment is the very worst that I have yet met.

Mr. A. Evans: I cannot persuade myself that the Minister is really seized of what will happen. He has been told by one of my hon. Friends that cases are likely to occur where improvements are made and one living room is taken to house a bath. This may result in a family being deprived of one of its two rooms.

Mr. Brooke: The Parliamentary Secretary said that the Government wished to consider the matter with a view to introducing into the Bill at the next stage an Amendment which would meet the point raised in the last Amendment, namely that the consent of the tenant should have to be obtained before the work was done. The hon. Gentleman cannot now say that this will damage the position of the tenant.

Mr. Evans: That seems to be irrelevant to the point that we are on. My experience is that the tenant, who may be a woman with several children, when asked whether she would like a water closet, a hot water supply and a bath to be provided, will give her signature not realising that as a result, under the Bill as it is now drawn, the local authority must give its consent to one of the family's two rooms being taken to be turned into a bathroom. Surely the right hon. Gentleman cannot contemplate that kind of thing happening. What the right hon. Gentleman is saying is that local authorities must hand out public money so that overcrowding in same of the worst areas of London shall be


made even worse—[HON. MEMBERS: "Nonsense."] If hon. Members wish to object, they should rise to their feet.
10.45 p.m.
This is a very important matter which involves the happiness and comfort of many families in my constituency. I can visualise a woman signing her consent to such improvements, the builders arriving to undertake the work, the local authority being obliged to agree to the work going ahead, and one of the living rooms being taken over to accommodate the new amenities. As a result of his coercion of local authorities, the Minister will be obliging local authorities to make overcrowding even worse.
I cannot believe that he fully appreciates what will happen, but I can assure him from my experience that the sort of thing I have described will happen unless he alters this provision. He has had the hardihood to make the retort that after the damage is done the local authority must enforce the Housing Acts and remove these people from their overcrowded conditions. Does the right hon. Gentleman realise the extent of overcrowding within two miles of his own home? Does he realise what will happen if he allows this sort of thing to occur? It is past belief that he should say that London's overcrowding can be dealt with by having the people go somewhere else. He must know that there is nowhere else for them to go. Unless he changes the Bill, he will be responsible for people being put on the street and for families being divided.

Amendment negatived.

Mr. Skeffington: I beg to move, in page 4, line 41, after first "be", to insert:
in good and tenantable repair and".

The Chairman: I think that it will be convenient if with this we also take the Amendment in page 4, line 42, after the second "that", to insert "repair and".

Mr. Skeffington: The purpose of the Amendment is to require a higher standard in the condition of a house before it can qualify for the grant and any other provisions of this part of the Bill. As the Clause stands, the lowest possible legal definition of a house is the one adopted. Even this definition is put in the most negative way. It is put in the form that the house has "not to be

unfit for human habitation." It does not even say that it must "be fit for human habitation." It is difficult to see how one could adopt a much lower standard for a home than that.
This is a very important matter affecting millions of people and their homes. We are often told that the home is the basis of our society, yet it is curious that when the Government legislate on the subject, they take the lowest, the minimal standard of what a home can be. It seems to us, and I hope that it will to some hon. Members opposite, that the greatest care should be taken to ensure that the standard of old houses is such that money spent on them will not be wasted and that for a few years, at any rate, they will have the ordinary amenities and reasonable standards.
Many of the houses which can qualify for grant under the terms of the Bill will be very old. There are 2½ million houses over sixty-five years old, and nearly 1 million which are 100 years old. Many were built from shoddy materials. I do not want to trespass on the time of the Committee, but it is worth remembering that 2½ million of our existing houses were being lived in sixty-five years ago, some of these were accurately and aptly described by the Royal Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes, in 1884. This was the Commission presided over by Sir Charles Dilke, and which had a most distinguished membership, including Cardinal Manning and the then Prince of Wales. After having made personal investigations in many large cities—which is something we are not always sure Ministers are doing—the Commission said this about houses being built in 1884, many of which are still being lived in:
It is perhaps needless to give a detailed description of the way in which many modern houses are run up for the working classes. What is called ferry building' is too well known to need evidence to prove its characteristics. There can be no doubt but that the houses are often built of the commonest materials, and with the worst workmanship, and are altogether unfit for the people to live in, especially if they are a little rough in their ways. The old houses are rotten from age and neglect. The new houses often commence where the old ones leave off, and are rotten from the first. It is quite certain that the working classes are largely housed in dwellings which would be unsuitable even if they were not overcrowded.
That language is vigorous and vivid, and comes from a very distinguished and


perceptive Commission. I mention it only to remind the Committee that a large number of houses so described are still being lived in. When one hears about the difficulties of landlords not being able to afford repairs, it is interesting to remember how many times the cost of construction of those houses must have been paid for in rent. Now, in 1959, we are giving public money to make a further grant to the owners of property of this kind.
It seems to us that the least the Committee is entitled to do is to ensure that, if public money is used for the amenities, we have not the lowest possible minimal standard conditions, which will just prevent a house from being classified as a slum. The phrase in the Amendment, "good and tenantable repair" is frequently inserted in covenants. It is well known in the courts. Judges and local authorities have no difficulty in understanding what is meant by it, and it carries the matter a little further than the very poor standard which the Government have included in the Bill. It does not carry it much further, but it does go a little way. In view of the age and condition of many of these houses, I hope that the Government will feel able to accept a slight improvement in the low definition of these houses that they have included in the Bill.

Mr. Janner: I make no apology for rising at this late hour to speak for a few moments on the Amendment, which is a vital one. I see a colleague in my profession on the opposite benches smiling. I will ask him whether he can still smile when he remembers what he has said on numerous occasions about the conditions of the houses which were sold by such people at the person to whom I referred a little earlier, Mr. Brady, and whether he still thinks there should not be some protection of public funds when houses of that sort are being dealt with.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (Mr. Skeffington) is perfectly right. All that is being asked in the Bill is that the House shall be considered unfit for human habitation. I do not know what that means. It certainly means that Mr. Brady's houses are not at present considered unfit for human habitation; and a large number of them are in such a condition that no

hon. Member of this Committee would want to live in them. Nor, indeed, is the tenant responsible for that condition, because for many years the moneys demanded from tenants for repairs have not been spent for that purpose.
I ask the Minister to consider carefully what he is doing. Does he intend to encourage the type of landlord who has neglected to do necessary repairs and has merely kept the house in a state in which it is just possible to say that they are fit for human habitation? Is he proposing to give an advantage to that landlord, who will receive a grant for purposes for which it will not be possible to refuse a grant? I know that the Minister will say that the house has to be up to certain standards, and he will refer me to other parts of the Bill—I am helping him Out about this—but, even so, the question of what is the standard will depend on the outlook of a particular local authority.
This is not "beating the air". This is the position which obtains in the country. There are hundreds of thousands of houses in the condition which I have described, and which cannot be and are not considered to be unfit for human habitation. If they were, they would be condemned. Now we are proposing to use public money to make improvements to those houses which will enhance the value of a property to an extent quite out of proportion to the amount being spent on it. When these improvements are made, the property will be an invaluable asset to those bad landlords who have purchased rotten property. It will give them an opportunity to get a higher market value for the property because of the improvements which have been subsidised from public funds.
That is not an exaggerated statement, and in those circumstances I ask the Minister, if he has not already done so, to consider it from that point of view. I am sure that he cannot have given the matter that consideration, if he is proposing to oppose this Amendment. I ask him to assure the Committee that he will make certain that that type of advantage cannot be taken by people who will utilise it unscrupulously for their own purposes. They have made use of other Acts for this purpose and they will have no scruples about using this legislation in order to make money. This is an


extremely important matter and I hope that the Minister will consider it in that light.

Mr. Bevins: My right hon. Friend and the Government are anxious that the new system of improvement grants provided for in the Bill shall be extensively used. We are, therefore, making arrangements for the payment of standard grants to be as simple and speedy as is administratively possible. I do not think there is any doubt that to put into the Bill a requirement that a house must be in good and tenantable repair would certainly introduce some scope for argument.
11.0 p.m.
Let us look at this matter practically. There are, as I see it, three categories of house which might be involved in an application for these grants. First, there are the controlled houses under the Rent Acts. Under those Acts there are provisions which penalise the landlord if he fails to keep the house in repair. If, on the other hand, the house is decontrolled, the question of the repair and maintenance of the house is a matter which rests between the landlord and the tenant. In the case of houses which are owner-occupied, that is a matter which, generally speaking, can safely be left to the owner of the property. If any owner has sufficient interest in his house to wish to improve it, that is to say, to put in these standard amenities, with financial help of course, it is most likely that he will already be keeping the house in reasonable repair as well.
It would be most unwise to complicate a system of standard grants to provide for the isolated owner who is prepared to improve, but who, at the same time, is not prepared to get on with the job of repairing and maintaining his property. The view of my right hon. Friend, who has given this matter a great deal of thought, is that this would introduce a refinement which would lead to uncertainty and argument and would frustrate one of the major objectives of this Bill.

Mr. Mitchison: That really will not do. The Minister has given the matter a great deal of thought, we are told. He seems to have given a great many matters a great deal of thought in con-

nection with this Bill. Really, what the Parliamentary Secretary has just said is simply unaccountable. The Bill already provides that the house has to be, and is likely to remain, in such condition as not to be unfit for human habitation.
In a later Clause we are referred to what that means. It means what it is said to mean in Section 4 of the Housing Act, 1957. Section 4 of that Act was prepared by the "office of circumlocution," before the present Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and it says:
In determining for any of the purposes of this Act whether a house is unfit for human habitation, regard shall be had to its condition in respect of the following matters …
It then refers to the matter of repair. The Section goes on to say:
… the house shall be deemed to be unfit for human habitation if … it is so far defective in one or more of the said matters that it is not reasonably suitable for occupation in that condition.
That cat really has caught its own tail.
Let me put it into plain English. In deciding whether a house is unfit for human habitation, one must look at the state of repair and must consider it unfit for human habitation if it is so far unfit for repair that it is unfit for human habitation. There never was a more nonsensical bit of drafting than Section 4 of the Housing Act. What the local authority has got to do under the Bill is to look at the question of repair, and not only that, but seven other matters, too, and apply that mysterious criterion to all of them. Yet the hon. Gentleman thinks it is beyond their capacity to consider whether or not the house is in good or tenantable repair.
I have never heard such nonsense in my life. It is because it was only the "office of circumlocution" which produced this provision—one, by the way, which local authorities are accustomed to administering in the course of their duties —that we thought it necessary to put in the very minimum provision in excess of that. "Good and tenantable repair" is a very mild provision indeed.
We are now told that it is to be a necessary condition that the landlord must have the house not unfit for human habitation, but that it is quite impossible to ask him to have it in good and tenantable repair. How very tender are the Government to the landlords. They are the only people who have got the power


to do anything under this Bill, and when we ask them to keep their houses in good and tenantable repair as a condition of getting public money to improve those houses we are told that that is altogether too much to put on them, and that what they must do is to see that the houses are fit for human habitation in the sense that as regards repair they shall be deemed to be fit for human habitation if they are fit for human habitation.

Mr. Skeffington: May I make a further appeal to the Minister? It is not correct to say that the use of this phrase would give rise to arguable propositions. This is a well-known phrase, incorporated in hundreds of thousands of cases—well understood, and well acted upon by local authorities. If the hon. Gentleman will not concede this, will he say whether a standard above the very minimal now in the Clause will be adopted? Otherwise, it appears that the Government will be satisfied even if the house is about to fall down.

Mr. Mitchison: May I correct my hon. Friend about the house being about to fall down. That is the one thing that the landlord has to see to. Under the Housing Act, he must have regard to stability. The Section says that the house will be unfit to live in if, in regard to stability, it is unfit to live in because it is unfit to live in.

Amendment negatived.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Clause stand part of the Bill.

Mr. Janner: I am upset about this matter, and so are many of my hon. Friends. I hope that in spite of the treatment we have received in respect of some of our Amendments, the Minister will realise that he will create an extremely serious position unless, between now and the Report stage of the Bill, he takes heed of some of our warnings.
I remember that some time ago it was suggested that a certain house was not fit for a dog to live in. The answer was that that was quite wrong—it was fit for a dog to live in. That is the kind of think the Minister will perpetuate if he does not very carefully re-examine this Clause.
It is a little late in the evening and, perhaps, the right hon. Gentleman is not

able to think clearly, but between now and the Report stage he should realise that much of what has been said this evening should have its effect on his mind, and alter his view of the purport of this Clause.

Mr. H. Brooke: We have already shown the care with which we examine the Opposition's Amendments by agreeing to consider sympathetically the principle behind one of them. We have not turned a blind eye to all of them. The one about which the hon. Gentleman is most concerned is one that, in the view of the Government, would make this system of standard grants unnecessarily complicated. It does not seem to us to be necessary to make statutory provision to stop a man doing what he would be most unlikely to do.
What we want is a smooth-working, simple arrangement to speed up the improvement of the houses, and I think that the Committee would be well advised to accept the Clauses in its present state, subject to the undertaking I have given that we will consider further whether we can meet the point about the tenant agreeing to the work being done.

Mr. Mitchison: My only conclusion on this Clause can be stated in one sentence. The only thing with which the Government is concerned here is the convenience and wishes of their sacred cow—the English landlord.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 6 and 7 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 8.—(EFFECT OF STANDARD GRANT ON LIMIT OF IMPROVEMENT GRANT.)

Mr. Bevins: I beg to move, in page b, line 15, at the beginning to insert:
(1) Where, at any time within three years after the making of a standard grant in respect of any dwelling, an application for an improvement grant is made in respect of that dwelling and the application contains a statement of the cost incurred in executing the works in respect of which the standard grant was made, subsection (3) of section thirty of the Act of 1958 (which prevents such an application from being entertained unless the estimated amount of the relevant expenses is not less than one hundred pounds or such other amount as may be prescribed) shall have effect, in relation to that application (or, if the dwelling is not the only


one to which the application relates, in relation to the application so far as it relates to the dwelling), as if the amount specified in or prescribed under that subsection were reduced by the cost incurred as aforesaid.
This is a very simple point. By Section 30 (3) of the Housing Act, 1958, a local authority is prohibited from entertaining an application for an improvement grant where the estimated cost of the improvement is less than £100.
What the Amendment does is to provide that where an application is made for grant under Section 30 of the 1958 Act in respect of a dwelling which has already been the subject of a standard grant, the figure of £100 or any sum which the Minister prescribes in substitution for £100 shall be reduced by the cost incurred in carrying out the provision of the standard amenities, that is to say, the full cost of the standard works is taken into account.
I could give an example of how that would work, but I imagine that the Committee would not wish me to do so at this stage.

Mr. Mitchison: I think we agree that the result would sometimes be a minus quantity.

Amendment agreed to.

Clause, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 9 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 10.—(DURATION OF LEASEHOLD INTEREST OF APPLICANT FOR IMPROVEMENT GRANT.)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Clause stand part of the Bill.

Mr. MacColl: I am not certain whether the point I warm to raise should be raised on this Clause or at a later stage. Possibly my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) will prompt me if I am raising it in the wrong place.
I am concerned about the question of the leasehold interest. We are in this Clause reducing the term of years of the remainder of long leases, and, therefore, we are providing for improvement grants at the expense of the lessee and at the public expense, when a larger share of the benefit will come to the lessor since the reversion will fall in more quickly.
I shall not, at this time of the night, attempt to move in the treacherous ground over which my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (Mr. Skeffington) and my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, North-west (Mr. Janner) moved so surely, namely, the treacherous ground of leaseholds generally. Nevertheles, whatever the rights of the lessor at the end of a long lease to have the benefit of improvements to the property, and so forth, there is no case for his having the benefit of public money.
If a grant has been made to the lessee, who is the person who has paid the cost of the improvement and provision of amenities, public money having been provided for that purpose, it would really be monstrous if it were possible for the lessor, when the reversion falls in, then to turn round to the lessee and say, "You have a nice bath in the house now and I am going to renew the lease at a much higher rent."

Mr. Janner: indicated assent.

Mr. MacColl: I see that my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, North-West follows the point I am making.
It is not a simple point, I agree, but there ought to be some provision in the Bill whereby, if public money is used by way of subsidy for amenities, the lessor should not be able to take advantage of that when he comes to negotiate new terms for a lease with the lessee, or, indeed, with any subsequent lessee. That would seem to be giving the sanctity of public support to a system which, at any rate, is the subject of much controversy and would cause very definite injustice. I raise the point now because I am not sure whether it is something which can be dealt with by amendment. I hope that the Minister will give it some thought between now and the Report stage.

Mr. H. Brooke: All I can do is to say that I will carefully study in HANSARD what the hon. Gentleman the Member for Widnes (Mr. MacColl) has said. I find it extremely hard to relate it to this Clause, and I am quite sure that I could not say anything positive and material in reply to him on this Clause without going beyond the bounds of order. I admire his ingenuity in bringing up the point this evening. I


shall consider what he has said, but I cannot say in advance what conclusion I shall reach upon it.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause ordered to stand part of the Bill.

11.15 p.m.

Mr. H. Brooke: We have not made as much progress as I would have hoped this evening, but we have now completed 10 Clauses and it is a quarter past eleven. I believe there is an understanding that if we do not sit too late tonight it will be possible for the Government to complete the Bill in another day, without sitting unreasonably late on that day. If that is the understanding I beg to move, "That the Chairman do report Progress and ask leave to sit again."

Mr. Mitchison: The Minister said that he hoped to get the Bill through, but no doubt he means through the Committee stage.

Mr. Brooke: indicated assent.

Mr. Mitchison: All I can say is that I will do my best to help him in attaining the object that he has suggested. I cannot go further than that.

Question put and agreed to.

Committee report Progress; to sit again upon Monday next.

Orders of the Day — NEW TOWNS [MONEY]

Resolution reported,
That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to make, as respects England and Wales, new provision in place of section fifteen of the New Towns Act, 1946, as to the disposal of the undertakings of development corporations and other matters arising when a development corporation has achieved or substantially achieved the purposes for which it is established, and to amend the law relating to development corporations in other respects, it is expedient to authorise the making of provision for the financial purposes mentioned below, that is to say,—
1. As regards the disposal of undertakings of development corporations and related matters, provision may be made—

(a) for defraying out of moneys provided by Parliament any charges for the remuneration, pensions or other benefits payable for a person's service on any new Commission established to take over assets and liabilities of development corporations;

(b) for making to any such Commission out of the Consolidated Fund advances for capital purposes or to meet revenue deficits, but so that—

(i) the advances made for capital purposes (except in respect of liabilities originally incurred by development corporations) shall be subject to a limit of five million pounds on the amount for the time being outstanding; and
(ii) the advances made to meet revenue deficits shall not exceed one million pounds;
and for raising the amounts of those advances by borrowing, and for the payment into the Exchequer, and application in reducing debt or meeting interest charges on debt, of repayments of principal and payments of interest in respect of those advances;
(c) for requiring surpluses arising to any such Commission to be paid into the Exchequer, and treated in whole or in part as repayments of such advances as aforesaid;
(d) for the making to any such Commission out of moneys provided by Parliament of such payments in connection with housing activities of the Commission as correspond to those payable to development corporations under the Housing (Financial Provisions) Act, 1958, together with certain additional payments (not exceeding eight pounds for any one year in respect of any one dwelling), for the transfer of those payments in certain circumstances to local authorities, and for the recovery from local authorities and payments into the Exchequer of part of any such additional payments;
(e) for the continuation after the transfer to any such Commission of a development corporation's property of all such payments as might but for the transfer be made in connection with housing activities of the corporation or otherwise to or by the corporation, the Minister of Housing and Local Government or any local authority, but with the Commission replacing the corporation, and for the Minister's payments to be made out of moneys provided by Parliament and his receipts to be paid into the Exchequer;
(f) for the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of any administrative expenses of that Minister;
(g) for the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of any increase in the sums payable by way of rate-deficiency grant or Exchequer equalisation grant under the enactments relating to local government in England and Wales or in Scotland, being an increase attributable—

(i) to any expenditure of local authorities in respect of payments under the provisions authorised by paragraphs (d) and (e) above; or
(ii) to any expenditure of local authorities under provisions relating to sewerage or sewage disposal undertakings


carried on for the purposes of new towns developed under the New Towns Act, 1946;
2. As regards other amendments of the law relating to development corporations, provision may be made—

(a) for increasing to four hundred million pounds the aggregate amount of the advances which may be made to development corporations under subsection (1) of section twelve of the New Towns Act, 1946; and
(b) for authorising the making by development corporations of contributions towards the provision of amenities for the new towns, and the consequent increase in their expenditure in respect of which advances may be made to them under subsection (1) of the said section twelve or grants may be made to them out of moneys provided by Parliament under subsection (2) of that section.

Resolution agreed to.

Orders of the Day — IMPORT DUTIES

The Minister of State, Board of Trade (Mr. J. K. Vaughan-Morgan): I beg to move,
That the Import Duties (General) (No. 3) Order, 1958 (S.I., 1958, No. 2223), dated 23rd December, 1958, a copy of which was laid before this House on 31st December, be approved.
I think it would be convenient if we rook this and the following Order together, Sir.
The Temporary Exemptions (No. 3) Order is to correct an error which was made in the No. 1 Order, which the House passed earlier. The effect for calcium D.L. pantothenate is as if the first Order had never been. The General (No. 3) Order continues the process of changing over to the Brussels tariff. One or two points have needed tidying up. This is part of the same process as we have had before. The intention is not to change the duty which was in the old tariff, but to carry over the same rates of duty from the old tariff into the new one. The reduction in duty under the new draft on certain glass bottles and jars could have been done under a negative Resolution, but I thought that it would be convenient to make the amendment in an omnibus Order.
I can go into detail if any hon. Member would like me to, but I can assure the House that there is no change from the rates of duty in the old tariff. On the last occasion I said that we hoped to be able to clear up all this in one more Order. But I was too optimistic and there will be a few more items to deal with. We shall, therefore, have to bring at least one more Order before the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That the Import Duties (General) (No. 3) Order, 1958 (S.I. 1958, No. 2223), dated 23rd December, 1958, a copy of which was laid before this House on 31st December, be approved.

Import Duties (Temporary Exemptions) (No. 3) Order, 1958 (S.I. 1958, No. 2225), dated 23rd December, 1958 [copy laid before the House, 31st December] approved.—[Mr. Vaughan-Morgan.]

Orders of the Day — HIGHWAYS BILL [Lords]

Lords Message [4th February] relating to the appointment of a Committee on the Highways Bill [Lords], to be considered forthwith.—[Mr. Legh.]

Lords Message considered accordingly.

Select Committee of Six Members appointed to join with the Committee appointed by the Lords to consider the Highways Bill [Lords]:

Mr. Philip Bell, Mr. Ernest Davies, Mr. Frank McLeavy, Mr. Peyton, Mr. Albert Roberts, and Sir Gerald Wills:

Power to send for persons, papers, and records; and to sit notwithstanding any Adjournment of the House:

Three to be the Quorum.—[Mr. Legh.]

Message to the Lords to acquaint them with such of the said Orders as are necessary to be communicated to their Lordships.

ADJOURNMENT

Resolved, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. E. Wakefield.]

Adjourned accordingly at nineteen minutes past Eleven o'clock.